Who can donate plasma?
Several criteria must be met by donors. Browse through them to check your eligibility.
Understanding plasma donation
Reality : Donor information, including lab work and test results, are kept confidential. Only you can view your file and make any necessary corrections. View our Privacy Policy to learn more.
Reality : Donor eligibility undergoes frequent revisions resulting in changes based on current scientific evidence. Donors who were previously deferred could now be eligible to donate. In addition, several eligibility criteria entail only temporary ineligibility to donate plasma.
Reality : In Québec, it is illegal to pay blood product donors. Our province’s plasma system relies solely on the generosity of our donors!
Recent changes to our eligibility criteria
Héma-Québec regularly reviews its blood, plasma and platelet donation eligibility criteria based on the latest scientific research. That means that people who were ineligible in the past may now be eligible to donate.
Lifting criteria for “mad cow disease”
Potential donors who had previously been excluded from blood product donation for geographic risk factors related to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) are now eligible to donate.
Relaxing criteria for diabetes
This change means that more people living with diabetes are now eligible to donate blood products. The criteria are easier to apply at blood drives and are better at identifying the risks for blood product donors and recipients.
Removing criteria for men who have sex with men (MSM) and implementing a gender-neutral questionnaire for blood product donation
All potential donors now respond to the same questions—no matter their sex, gender or sexual orientation—and must indicate if they’ve had sex with one or more new partners in the past three months.
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