Health Coalitions denounce for-profit deal by Canadian Blood Services that endangers Canada’s Blood Supply

  • Health Coalitions denounce for-profit deal by
    Canadian Blood Services that endangers Canada’s
    Blood Supply
    Canada’s provincial and territorial Health Coalitions and the Canadian Health Coalition
    call for the resignation of the leadership of the Canadian Blood Services (CBS) including
    the CEO and Board of Directors. This call comes after the appalling decision by CBS to
    sign a 15-year agreement with a for-profit international pharmaceutical firm to collect
    plasma.
    Instead of investing in expanding successful publicly operated voluntary plasma
    collection, CBS has signed an agreement that ensures private profits while risking the
    sustainability of Canada’s blood and plasma supply. The agreement hands over the
    collection of plasma to private for-profit company Grifols, which will pay donors for
    plasma, something that experts and public interest advocates have strongly opposed. In
    fact, Grifols has a history of going into Mexico loading up buses of people taking them
    across into the US harvesting the plasma and taking them back into Mexico the same
    day.
    This deal endangers the sustainability of Canada’s blood supply by opening up a
    precious and medically crucial public asset to profit-making. Instead of blood being a
    universal and free public resource, this deal opens up the doors to private, for-profit
    corporations moving into the blood collection system. This would harm the voluntary
    donation system that Canadians currently rely on.
    Importantly, this undemocratic deal circumvents legislated provincial bans on private
    payment for plasma in Ontario and BC. CBS has undermined existing legislation and
    the citizens of Ontario and BC to make a unilateral decision about Canada’s plasma
    supply. This is an undemocratic violation of the trust that the public placed in CBS to
    protect the public blood and plasma collection system.
    The Krever commission/Royal Commission of Inquiry on the Blood System in Canada,
    which led to the creation of the CBS itself, noted that blood should be a public resource
    and no one should be paid to donate blood or plasma. In provinces where private
    payment for plasma occurs, voluntary donations have been negatively impacted.

  • There are proven public and non-profit solutions to increase and protect Canada’s
    voluntary blood and plasma supply such as building more publicly-operated collection
    sites. In fact, CBS has already increased their capacity to collect plasma through new
    voluntary donation sites.
    Paid plasma goes against the advice of major international healthcare organizations
    such as the World Health Organization, the European Blood Alliance and many others.
    Therefore, Canada’s Health Coalitions are calling on our health ministers to act to
    protect our public system, and for the replacement of the CBS CEO and Board of
    Directors for failing to fulfill their mandate or take leadership in the interest of the
    Canadian public.