It's my understanding that when Héma-Québec and Canadian Blood Services looked at their most recent research, they were able to make a case to reduce it from five years to one year.
The push-back that I would offer, and that I explained at the conference is, how does the microbiology change? If you have the blood, and after two months, you do a new nucleic acid test and you know exactly what is in the blood supply, why is it one year? Why is it two months?
The answer is that they don't have the science to say why it's one year versus no years. If we're going to have a behavioural approach that encourages people to defer the blood from the system because of behaviour, then it's important that we understand any risk factors associated with that population. I would like to see, as a government, that we have the data to analyze all populations that would pose a risk to the blood supply, and that we don't use a broad brush stroke on one community.
You would have to ask Héma-Québec and Canadian Blood Services why they advocated for one year, when we have seen other jurisdictions around the world have no deferral period or a deferral period of two months.