• twig@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 months ago

    So this letter board is clearly advertising Canadian blood services. Canada’s healthcare system could use a lot of work, but it is far from the dumpster fire that American healthcare is.

    If you want to shitpost about this and assume as Americans do that America is the only place, maybe try to find an image that isn’t so obviously from a country with universal healthcare.

    • buzz86us@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Yup in America we donate the blood to hospitals that sell the blood… So why can’t we deduct blood donations for their monetary value on tax forms?

      • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        in America you donate blood for free, and your blood gets sold to the hospitals for 100-400 dollars. then the hospitals charge the patients who receive it even more than that.

            • m0darn@lemmy.ca
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              7 months ago

              Are they?

              Canadian Blood Services (CBS) says it plans to introduce the new behaviour-based questionnaire approach “no later” than Sept. 30. It will apply to both blood and plasma donations, outside of Quebec.

              It will mean that when all donors are screened before rolling up their sleeves, they’ll be asked whether they have recently engaged in anal sex in the context of new or multiple sexual partners within the last few months. If they have, they would not be able to donate until they had gone three months without engaging in that activity.

              I thought that change (2022) was the end of the discussion.

              • twig@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                7 months ago

                Tragically, no. I thought so too until quite recently. They did improve things but it’s pretty rough

                Since a viral load can be reduced to zero through medication, HIV-positive folks can be non contagious. The use of condoms, even if the viral load is not suppressed through medication, seriously reduces the risk of HIV transmission. They don’t ask questions about condom usage. To be clear I’m not suggesting that HIV-positive folks should be donating blood, just that the actual factors for transmission are way more specific than “butt stuff = AIDS” the way that they imply. The result of this is still excluding queer folks end up getting excluded with language that’s less overtly hostile and more implicitly hostile.

                The screening doesn’t exclude people based how many partners a person has slept with, or whether they have used protection (both of which are massive risk factors for transmission) and instead basically forbids anyone who engages in anal sex from donating blood.

                • m0darn@lemmy.ca
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                  7 months ago

                  The last time I donated blood (quite recently) I was asked if I had had a new sex partner or more than one sex partner the last 3 months.

                  I was asked if I had had sex with anyone within the last year that had previously had/ tested positive for hiv/aids.

                  I was asked if I had taken any hiv/aids preventers.

                  Is it the follow-up questions to these initial screening questions that are homophobic?

      • kameecoding@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        In my country you get a day off on top of being paid for your blood donation, I think you get some tax benefits on top of that too.