Blood donation: EFS to delete data mentioning homosexual relationships from its archives

In 2016, the law allowed homosexuals to donate blood, which had been prohibited since 1983 due to the risk of transmitting AIDS, on the condition that they had been abstinent for a year. This period was then reduced to four months in 2019, and the condition lifted in March 2022, when all references to sexual orientation were removed from pre-donation questionnaires.

In 2022, the EFS had "questions about what to do with this data," and preferred "not to delete it immediately," said Sara-Lou Gerber. It was then "archived" in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation, stored in "a sort of capsule separate from the information system, accessible to a very limited number of employees, and encrypted," she assures.

How was this deletion triggered?

In the spring of 2025, a person wrote to the EFS to find out what data was held about them, request its deletion, and question the broader retention of this "MSM" data. "The EFS then considered that it did not provide any evidence on transfusion safety that would justify its retention, but we did not want to delete it without consulting the Ministry of Health and the ANSM," argues the Deputy Director General.

The LGBT+ association Tous. tes, which had communicated on the subject in July on Instagram, then launched a petition in late July in favor of this deletion, which collected more than 15,000 signatures. "The EFS is currently undergoing an IT audit, and by mid- to late September, the bulk of the data should have been deleted, before additional cleanups by the end of the year at the latest," according to Sara-Lou Gerber.