The Social Democratic Party (SDP) on Monday called for enabling all citizens, regardless of their sexual orientation, to donate blood, warning that "only gay men" were not allowed to donate blood in Croatia, state agency Hina reported.

In a statement issued on World Blood Donor Day, the SDP points to current restrictions for blood donation, which, it says, were introduced in the 1980s due to the outbreak of the HIV epidemic and under which “only gay men” are not allowed to donate blood.

Neither SDP nor Hina explained whether gay women are allowed to donate blood.

Citing current regulations on technical requirements for blood and blood products, the party says that blood cannot be donated by “persons whose sexual behaviour puts them at a high risk of contracting infectious diseases that can be transmitted by blood” and that information on the Croatian Institute for Transfusion Medicine website says that “men who have had sex with other men” must not donate blood.

The party recalls that the Court of the EU in Strasbourg in 2015 made a ruling in which it said that if criteria for blood donation were based on a person’s sexual orientation, they constituted stigmatization and discrimination.

“Croatia has one of the most restrictive laws in that regard and is in a group of countries that also includes China, Lebanon, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela and Turkey,” the party says.

It notes that the country has been experiencing a shortage of blood and blood products, which is causing delays of more complicated operations, and that considering the significantly changed situation today as well as numerous obligatory safeguards in blood transfusion, the reasons for maintaining such drastic restrictions no longer exist.

The Croatian Institute for Transfusion Medicine tests every blood donation for hepatitis B, hepatitis C, syphilis and HIV, the party recalls.

The safety of donated blood is ensured also by a temporary ban on blood donation for persons who in the previous three months were at risk of getting infected through sexual contact or blood, which, the party says, does not depend on one’s sexual orientation.

“This brings up the question of why gay men are obliged to state their sexual preferences to medical staff and why they are permanently forbidden to donate blood solely on grounds of sexual orientation,” says the SDP.