Recently in the paper the Oslo blood bank has been complaining that it has so little blood that doctors are having to postpone scheduled surgeries. As a result of the media coverage, tons of people, of course, signed up to donate blood. Subsequently, tons of people got rejected as blood donors. The media has not brought to light the fact that the Social and Health Directorate’s restrictions about who can donate blood include people born in some foreign countries, countries which the majority of Oslo’s immigrants come from–regardless of how long you’ve lived in Norway. You can also not donate if you have had sex with someone from one of those countries. Likewise, you cannot donate if you’re a man and have ever had sex with a man. And of course you cannot donate blood if you’ve ever had a facial piercing.
I’m irritated but not surprised to see that here we are, a year later, and the same thing’s happening again. The blood bank says that have a particularly large need for type O blood, of course. I get angry, sitting here with all this nice, fresh, universally-usable type O- blood in my veins.
Obviously if the Social and Health Directorate’s screening rules are resulting in regular blood shortages in this town, they need to be re-evaluated. The blood bank spends such a ridiculous amount of time with pointless bureaucracy and paperwork every time it screens a blood donor. An easier, less time-consuming, and more productive system for tapping donated blood would involve providing complete information up-front about who is eligible to donate–not providing it after you and the blood bank have already spent a bunch of time making appointments and going through interviews. Most importantly, though, the regulations are ruling out thousands of healthy, willing donors. The blood’s going to get screened for the relevant diseases, regardless–at least I hope it is! Trying to donate blood here can be such an unpleasant experience, both because of the attitude the state has towards people who are “different” and because it makes you wonder how many other governmental institutions are being run with such a disconnect from reality.
People with facial piercings are not a huge voting bloc, that’s for sure. But now that immigrants (including popular politicians–SV’s Akhtar Chaudhry is profiled in the story) are getting angry about these idiotic policies, perhaps something will change.
I'm a 31 year old American expat living in Oslo, Norway, with my bulldog, Ada, and my husband, Johannes. My interests include interaction design, especially information architecture, philosophy of mind and ethics, cognitive psychology, sociobiology, feminism, yoga, fat acceptance, knitting, pottery, and cooking.
