Two people have died in the last five months after selling plasma to private, for-profit collection centres owned by Grifols Canada.
Now, health-care advocacy groups across the country are raising serious concerns about Grifols’ operations, and the multiple sites that Health Canada has deemed non-compliant with regulations.
“Grifols has been found non-compliant more times in just their three and a half years — they’re brand new — of operation, than all other blood and blood products collection sites in Canada over the last 14 years,” says Natalie Mehra, executive director of the Ontario Health Coalition.
Following the two deaths and a third person alleging they suffered kidney damage, advocates want all Grifols locations shuttered and for Canadian Blood Services to take over.
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The company maintains there’s no link between the deaths and plasma donation, and an investigation by Health Canada is ongoing.
Grifols has been operating under a confidential agreement with Canadian Blood Services since 2022, which advocates say has created a harmful model.
“This deal opened the door for for-profit plasma collection in Canada,” says Siobhán Vipond, vice-chair of the Canadian Health Coalition. “It created loopholes around the provincial bans, and it really blurred the line between public health care and private profit.”
Grifols declined to comment when Global News reached out.
A representative also declined to publicly share details of that agreement at Parliament’s Standing Committee on Health last week. However, the committee ordered the company to provide that agreement to them by no later than April 10.
Noah Schulz from the Manitoba Health Coalition says paying for plasma often attracts financially vulnerable donors.
“People who are giving because they’re incentivized to give frequently, and so this can mean they have downstream health effects, says Schulz. “We also have a lot of inequality, a lot of poverty, a lot of vulnerability within Manitoba.”
Canadian Blood Services says they are awaiting the results of the Health Canada investigation. A statement from Manitoba Health Minister Uzoma Asagwara says the province is also monitoring the investigation and is still considering whether it will ban paid plasma donation.
Chris Gallaway, executive director of Alberta-based Friends of Medicare, argues the only ethical, sustainable model is a public one.
“If you give Canadians the opportunity to donate voluntarily their plasma locally, they will do it, they will show up,” says Gallaway. “We don’t need to be continuing down this profit-driven road with a for-profit corporation.”
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