Is this a Indian community?

It's an international community and we have a lot of people living all over the world. The regulars I interact with mostly are in Norway, UK, US, Canada, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and, yes, India. I've only been to a few of those countries but it's nice having friends all over the place.

If you look at https://www.digitalpoint.com/members/usermap you'll see that Europe and the East Coast of America dominate. There's even a few from Old Blighty

 

I had to look that up
Looks like a nice place to call home. The UK is cool too but quite happy I didn't end up living there forever. Had a few years in my 20s - long enough to permanently disqualify myself as a blood donor

 

If it was back in the '90s, yes, I don't lose a lot of sleep over it but for a while, my Mum was having frequent blood transfusions and it seemed wrong to not be a donor.

My sister has worked in the NHS for decades and has just left for a job in the private sector and thinks it's ridiculous but there you go.

 

I've been back 22 years

Blame the British farmer!

 

Yep, you'd think my kids would be barred too given that we shared blood products for 9 long months.

 

@jrbiz apparently cjd isn't an on/off thing, you need repeated exposure (if this policy is anything to go by). If you had close family or business ties it's not hard to clock up a 6 months total in 16 years.

The demographic that is most likely to donate are also the group that were most likely to have done an OE & made the most of their 2 year work visa to the UK. So if you were a young adult between those years you can't donate, ever.

 

The states may be more pragmatic too.

I spent most of my time there as a vegetarian

and what of the person who did clock up 5.9 months and then turned up later and at .1 months of beef from the freezer

It's worth noting that they allow their own people to be blood donors even if they lived in the UK then.