Compliance with the current 12-month deferral for male-to-male sex in Australia

Background and Objectives In Australia since 2000, donors are deferred for12 months since last male-to-male sexual contact. There is no estimate of theprevalence of non-compliance (i.e. failure to disclose a risk during the predona-tion interview which would lead to deferral) with the policy in Australia; how-ever, published studies elsewhere indicate a range of 0 8–11%. We investigatedthe rate of, timing and motivation for non-compliance.Materials and Methods A nationally representative sample of donors who hadmade a recent donation negative for transfusion-transmissible infection testingwas surveyed using an anonymous, online instrument. Non-compliance was con-sidered as a ‘yes’ response to the current screening question. Non-compliers wererequested to define the timing of the last sexual contact relevant to their mostrecent donation. Univariate and multivariate regression analyses were used todefine factors associated with non-compliance.Results Of 14 476 responses from male donors, 34 (0 23%, 95% CI: 0 16–0 33%)were non-compliant of whom 24 (0 17%, 95% CI: 0 11–0 25%) had contactwithin 6 months of donation. Factors significantly associated with non-compli-ance included: multiple sexual partners, history of injecting drug use, perceptionof a lack of privacy during interview and preference for a computer-based ques-tionnaire.Conclusion Our study confirms high compliance (>99 7%) to the 12-month defer-ral for male-to-male sex in Australia providing reassuring evidence for the effi-cacy of the screening question. Issues of ‘privacy’ and ‘discomfort’ associated withdisclosure suggest the use of validated audio computer-assisted structured inter-view as a possible option for improving compliance with the donor questionnaire.Key words: donors, epidemiology, transfusion-transmissible infection.