Health New blood donation rules come into force at the start of 2025
Blood donations may not be remunerated in Switzerland, and everyone should be able to donate blood. These principles will be enshrined in law from 2025.
27.09.2024, 10:44
27.09.2024, 21:06
SDA
On Friday, the Federal Council announced that the amendments to the Therapeutic Products Act regarding blood donation adopted by Parliament will come into force on January 1, 2025. The constitutionally guaranteed principles of non-remuneration and non-discrimination in blood donation will then be enshrined in law.
In future, people may not be excluded from donating blood on the basis of their sexual orientation, for example. Instead, the criteria according to which someone is not permitted to donate must be based on individual risk behavior and science.
The background to this is that gay and bisexual men were generally excluded from donating blood after the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic from 1988 to 2017 - regardless of their personal life situation and behavior. Currently, men are only permitted to donate blood if they have not had sex with men in the past twelve months.
According to Swiss Transfusion SRC Ltd, blood donation criteria regardless of sexual orientation have been applied in practice since November 2023, after the Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products Swissmedic gave the green light.
The revised Therapeutic Products Act also stipulates that there is no payment for donating blood in Switzerland. No blood or labile blood products may be imported for transfusion purposes for which such benefits have been granted or accepted. This puts the constitutional principle in the Therapeutic Products Act into concrete terms.
Despite fluctuations, the supply of blood products remained stable in Switzerland in 2023. The number of blood donations fell slightly by 0.6% to 263,702. The Swiss Transfusion SRC set a new record for blood stem cell transplants.
