EDMONTON — Private, for-profit plasma collector Grifols has announced they are temporarily pausing blood plasma collection at all of its donation centres across Canada, including collection sites here in Alberta. This news came after months of public scrutiny on the company’s operations following the deaths of two individuals who sold their plasma at a Grifols site in Winnipeg.
“This pause is good news for the safety of Canadians and Albertans. Serious ongoing safety concerns have been raised over Grifols’ paid plasma collection sites across the country, including at the Calgary collection site which was found to be non-compliant with federal safety regulations,” said Chris Gallaway, executive director of Friends of Medicare. “But it has been many long months since two people died after selling their plasma to Grifols. We should have seen immediate action taken to protect Canadians. But the frustrating truth is that today’s announcement would have never happened if family members and health advocates across the country hadn’t got loud and continued to push to get some accountability from Grifols, Health Canada, and Canadian Blood Services.”
Health Canada’s own reporting shows that in the past decade, 92.5% of adverse reactions experienced by plasma donors occurred at Grifols’ paid plasma sites. Health coalitions from across Canada, including Friends of Medicare, continue to demand that Health Canada, Canadian Blood Services and our governments take immediate action to end Grifols’ authorization to collect plasma in Canada, and for provinces — including Alberta — to prohibit paid and for-profit blood and blood products collection going forward.
“Albertans have been reaching out to us asking why these sites are allowed to continue operating, and profiting from the buying and selling of Canadians’ blood plasma. The answer is because our governments have willingly let them,” said Gallaway. “The privatization of plasma collection in Canada set off a dangerous precedent that erodes our voluntary donation system. What we are seeing now appears to be the direct consequence of that decision: very serious safety concerns for Canadians seeking to give their plasma."
Alberta advocates, including Friends of Medicare, were successful in winning a provincial ban on paid plasma in Alberta, before that legislation was repealed by the newly-formed UCP government in 2020. In 2022, Canada’s public blood authority, Canadian Blood Services, signed an unprecedented exclusive 15-year agreement that handed over the collection of plasma to Grifols, a private for-profit company. This contract, and its direct undermining of our voluntary blood and plasma donation system, was something that Friends of Medicare and many other health care experts and advocates, strongly opposed and denounced as a dangerous decision at the time.
“Enough with the backroom deals and corporate takeover of our health care. Our governments need to step in to ensure safety, and bring these collection services back under our public Canadian Blood Services umbrella. We have public solutions to collect blood and plasma safely and voluntarily for a reason. We don’t need to continue down this dangerous for-profit road. It’s time to do what we should have done in the first place: put public safety ahead of profit,” concluded Gallaway.
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