A foreign multinational company can export Canadian blood plasma products for profit abroad, The Breach has learned.
That flies in the face of what’s been pledged by Canadian Blood Services and Grifols, the Spanish multinational corporation that is trying to open private plasma collection centres across Ontario and already operates in some other provinces.
Grifols, the world’s largest private plasma producer, had sworn that their products would be “exclusively for Canadian Blood Services and Canadian patients.”
But the revelation that they can export products for sale overseas is the first window into a secret contract the company signed with Canada’s blood authority in 2022 to allow them to pay for blood plasma.
Public blood advocates and nurses unions have long said that if private companies were authorized to operate alongside the country’s system of voluntary donations, they would end up selling plasma to the highest bidder on the international market.
Plasma contains vital proteins, including antibodies and enzymes, used to develop treatments for haemophilia and neurological conditions, and it has grown into a $35 billion-a-year global sector.
Grifols hit a roadblock on Monday, as Hamilton’s Public Health Committee unanimously backed a resolution from Mayor Andrea Horwath to reject a planned Grifols collection centre and declare the city a “paid-plasma-free zone.”
Horwath said that “anything that preys upon the most vulnerable is hideous and doesn’t belong in Hamilton.”
The revelation about the pharma giant was prompted by a letter sent by a Grifols-connected advocate to the Hamilton city council committee, as it deliberated over the resolution.
In the letter, the executive director of patient advocacy group Alpha-1 Canada, called for Hamilton’s collection centre to go ahead to meet the needs of her patients.
However, the type of plasma products that Grifols has said it would collect would not help Alpha-1 patients, implying that other kinds of lucrative plasma products may be processed.
Grifols is a “platinum sponsor” of Alpha-1 Canada.
The lobbyist who knew too much?
It appears to be the case of an industry-connected advocate who knew too much—and let closely-guarded information slip out.
For years, Grifols and Canadian Blood Services have told the public and government that their collection centres would only harvest plasma for immunoglobulins—one of the medications made from blood plasma that is in high demand among Canadian patients.
Nothing was ever said about the processing of other profitable plasma protein products, including those used by Alpha-1Canada patients, who suffer from a disorder that causes lung and liver disease.
Sources familiar with developments at Canada’s blood authority confirmed that plasma products processed by Grifols could be sold abroad.
There is nothing in federal regulations to stop the company from doing that, Kat Lanteigne, executive director of advocacy group Blood Watch told The Breach.
Lateigne, whose organization has tracked the plasma industry for years, shared correspondence with Health Canada confirming this.
In 2022, a representative from the federal ministry wrote that it has “no regulatory requirements concerning who a plasma collector may sell their plasma to, since any such arrangements are corporate decisions of the plasma collectors.”
In a statement to The Breach, Canadian Blood Services declined to say what the contract allows Grifols to do with other manufactured plasma products.
Neither Grifols nor the Ontario health ministry responded to The Breach’s questions on the subject.
The executive director of Alpha-1 Canada said she was out of the office and unable to respond to The Breach’s questions.
Spanish pharma giant will ‘capitalize on a fortune’
That deal between Grifols and Canada’s blood authority has accelerated an assault on the voluntarism that has been at the core of blood and plasma collection in Canada for decades, and quickened the country’s shift toward a for-profit system.
Critics have often invoked the example of the United States, where private centres operate in low-income neighbourhoods, paying poor people to sell their plasma so multinational companies can manufacture expensive drugs for large profits.
Besides immunoglobulins, other products made from processed plasma are used to treat a number of conditions like trauma, burn and shock, and liver disease.
The voluntary donor system already supplies enough of these plasma-derived products for Canadian patients.
With no legal restraint and nobody to sell those products to in Canada, Grifols has been incentivized to sell these products globally, Lateigne said.
“Do you think this pharmaceutical giant will discard those blood components collected from people they spend millions of dollars advertising to?” Lanteigne told Hamilton’s Public Health Committee on Monday. “Or do you think they will capitalize on their fortune? Pharmaceutical companies like Grifols make money by diversifying their portfolio.”
The privatization of blood and plasma collection goes against the founding principles of Canadian Blood Services, a national charity that manages blood supply outside of Quebec.
It was created to keep donations voluntary after the “tainted blood” scandal of the 1980s, which resulted in 8,000 Canadians dying from improperly screened, infected blood from paid donors through a for-profit donation system.
Paying for blood donations remains banned in British Columbia, Quebec, and Ontario.
But Doug Ford’s Conservative government quietly gave a green light to Grifols earlier this year, appearing to accept the Canadian blood authority’s argument that the Spanish company is acting as an “agent” of Canadian Blood Services.
The B.C. health ministry disagreed, and confirmed last year that it would keep enforcing its ban and that Grifols would not be allowed to operate in the province.
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3 comments
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Once again in Canada, money talks and blood kills.
Thank you for these informative articles. I recently began donating blood and thankfully suffer from no major diseases. I did notice that at times blood services post they require specific types of blood. So I’m also now wondering if that shortage or low supply, is in any way related to their ‘sales’ department rather than to a true Canadian need.
Doug Ford’s Conservative government say he is a man for the people but I and many others see him as a man only for the rich corporate people it is high time we got rid of this corrupt government that only seams hell bent on destroying our environment and our health system to help his corporate friends.