The Ontario government has reportedly confirmed that it approves of a private company paying blood plasma donors in the province, despite a ban on the practice.
According to the Voluntary Blood Donations Act of 2014, within Ontario’s health care system, blood donations are viewed as a public resource.
“Blood donors should not be paid, except in exceptional circumstances,” the act states. “The integrity of the public, voluntary blood donor system in Ontario must be protected.”
But the Canadian Blood Services (CBS) announced that it has partnered with the for-profit multinational pharmaceutical company Grifols, who will open paid plasma collection sites in Whitby, Cambridge, and Hamilton later this year and in 2025. The organization stated that Grifols would operate under the Voluntary Blood Donations Act as an “agent” of CBS, adding that, through the agreement, Canada will reach a minimum target of 50% sufficiency for immunoglobulins in the shortest time possible.
“Concerns about partnering with a plasma company to collect plasma in Canada are extremely misguided—particularly as alarms about global supply are increasing,” Jennifer van Gennip, Executive Director, Network of Rare Blood Disorder Organizations, said in a statement in 2023 when Grifols announced its next steps in fulfilling its contractual commitment to CBS. “With safety concerns mitigated completely, our focus is now on the security of the supply of plasma required for Canadian patients to have access to life-saving plasma-derived medicinal products when needed. The agreement between Canadian Blood Services and Grifols is a necessary tactic to achieve this.”
Grifols will be operating under a 15-year deal with CBS to privatize plasma collection in Canada, a move that has some worried.
“The only way to keep our blood supply safe in Canada is to keep private, for-profit corporations like Grifols away from it,” Geoff Cain, Chair of the Blood Services and Diagnostics sector, said in a statement. “Introducing for-profit plasma collection sites where Grifols can pay donors for their plasma not only exploits vulnerable people experiencing financial difficulty, but could also create a decrease in volunteers donating whole blood to CBS, undermining system as a whole.”
After the tainted blood tragedy of the 1980’s— where approximately 2,000 Canadians were infected with HIV from tainted blood products—the Krever Commission recommended that Canada’s blood be self-sufficient, that blood should be a public resource, that donors not be paid for blood, and that access to blood products be universal and free.
Ontario is one of three provinces (alongside B.C. and Quebec) that bans compensating blood donors. The issue of whether or not it is ethical is being debated across social media:
It’s not hard to believe at all.
Canada has been relying on companies like Grifols to supply more than 80% of our plasma for more than a decade.
The choice is continue to pay Americans for their plasma, or pay Canadians for plasma.
— The Plasma Professor (@petermjaworski) February 21, 2024
According to the Globe and Mail, recent emails obtained through the access-to-information law by the advocacy group BloodWatch show that—in the days leading up to the June 2023 announcement—CBS was privately imploring the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care to provide it with a written opinion that Grifols’s plans were legal.
In a briefing document reportedly sent between public servants in the ministry on June 7, 2023, a day prior to CBS and Grifols announcing their plans, CBS indicated that, without a letter confirming the Ministry’s permission for Grifols to operate in Ontario, Grifols’ five collection centres in Ontario could be cancelled. A spokesperson for Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones’s office apparently confirmed with a “yes” to the Globe when asked if the government believed Grifols was operating in accordance with the blood-donation legislation.
