Cancer

Blood cannot be donated if you are currently being treated for or monitored due to cancer. In addition, you may not donate blood if you have had cancer previously and have now recovered and are free of symptoms.

You can donate blood if you’ve recovered from cancer and you are no longer being monitored provided it was localised, had not spread at the time of diagnosis, and was treated by localised surgery, localised radiotherapy or irrigation therapy. Cancers of this kind include many prostate cancers and skin cancers.

Localised cancer recovery and follow-up can take for example five years, but basal cell carcinomas, for instance, may not require monitoring at all. That’s why the deferral period in the case of basal cell carcinomas will shorten to a minimum of one month.

The donation restriction related to cancer is based on the fact that blood donation could strain the donor’s system or assist in the return of the illness. This ban on donating blood is widely used around the world, and is also recorded in the regulations adhered to in Europe.

Would you like more information? Please call the free information number for blood donors on 0800 0 5801 (Mon to Fri from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.).