Donation if you are LGBT+

Assuming you meet all of the other criteria for donation, you can donate your blood except:

• If you have had anal sex with a new partner or multiple partners in the last three months, regardless of your gender or your partner’s gender.
• If you are taking pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) or post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) you will be unable to give blood. If you stop taking PrEP or PEP, you will need to wait 3 months before you can give blood.

Read more about the rules on the blood donation website or the JPAC blood safety guidelines and read the SaBTO report which recommended the move to a more individualised assessment.

As with all guidelines, the evidence that they are based upon evolves over time and NHSBT are committed to reviewing donor deferrals periodically.

You can donate your organs regardless of sexual orientation or gender. Find out more about organ donation. 

It is important that you discuss your wishes for organ donation with your family and consider joining the Organ Donor Register.

The law on organ donation in England has changed. All adults in England will now be considered to have agreed to be an organ donor when they die unless they have recorded a decision not to donate or are in one of the excluded groups.

Assuming you meet all of the other criteria for donation, you can donate your tissues except if you are a:

• man who has had oral or anal sex with a man (with or without protection) in the last 3 months. If it has been longer than 3 months you can donate.
• person who has had sex with a man who has had oral or anal sex with a man (with or without protection) in the last 3 months. If it has been longer than 3 months you can donate.

There is not a deferral for women who have sex with women – these women can donate at any time.

When exploring tissue donation, staff apply the criteria and assess suitability carefully and sympathetically.

You can donate your stem cells regardless of sexual orientation or gender. 

NHSBT manages the British Bone Marrow Registry (BBMR), which recruits from blood donors. If a gay or bisexual man becomes a blood donor following the three-month deferral, they can also join the BBMR and donate stem cells subject to individual medical risk assessment. More information about the British Bone Marrow Registry. 

You can also join the Anthony Nolan stem cell register or the DKMS register who work in partnership with NHS Blood and Transplant. All three registries share their information to ensure the best possible chance of finding someone a match.

For some patients, doctors prefer to use a donor whose gender assigned at birth is matched with that of the patient.

Being transgender does not in any way prevent you from being able to donate. All donors are addressed using the title and pronouns of their choice. NHS Blood and Transplant considers all donors to be the sex and/or gender that they identify as, including nonbinary, genderfluid and agender donors.

Blood donation if you are transgender

As with all donors, a careful and sympathetic consideration of sexual risk factors is undertaken.

Haemoglobin testing is conducted in accordance with the gender with which you identify. This is because the majority of transgender people undergo hormone replacement therapy which brings their haemoglobin levels in line with most cis people of the same gender.

The JPAC guidelines give more information about donation if you are transgender. This link goes to a different website which may not use the same language as this site. 

Some blood products are safe to manufacture from the blood of donors assigned male at birth but not from those assigned female at birth.

We therefore ask you to provide your assigned sex at birth during the confidential health check which all donors have before every donation.  

We recognise that many trans people may not consider this suitable, so as part of the FAIR changes, we have plans to require the assigned sex at birth only once at registration and not at every session, once our systems are configured to record this data.

NHS Blood and Transplant does not set the guidelines for donation. Recommendations on donor eligibility are made to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) by the Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs (SaBTO).

If these recommendations are accepted by the Government, NHS Blood and Transplant and usually the other United Kingdom blood services are instructed to implement them. The donor selection criteria are then written by the Joint United Kingdom (UK) Blood Transfusion and Tissue Transplantation Services Professional Advisory Committee (JPAC).