Peter Johnson enters his Canadian blood services donation center in Saint John every week to make plasma.
When I was a child, Johnson suffered from idiopathic thrombocytopenic purple, which leads to bruises and bleeding. It was treated with steroids, but today, one of the treatments is intravenous immunoglobulin, made of plasma.
That is why he has been plasma since he was old enough to donate.
The two -hour process takes full blood from Johnson’s arm, separates the yellow plasma and returns the rest to his body. He knows the value of his donations.
What I did not know was that Canadian Blood Services sells by -products of Canadian blood donation to the multinational pharmaceutical company Grifols SA, based in Barcelona, Spain. That company is now using Canadian plasma to make medications at the Montreal Grifols plant for sale abroad.
Johnson said he has a “fundamental problem” with donations used to make profits.
“My preference would be to remain in a non -profit type of an environment,” he said. “I think that is the donor’s intention.”
Johnson said he believes others would agreeE, if they knew that donations were becoming profits.
“I think so, because I just learned today, and I like to think that I am quite well informed and connected to the system and how it works,” he said. “And most would be interested in knowing that, I think.”
Canadian Blood Services manages Canada’s blood supply everywhere, except Quebec, where he is directed by Héma-Québec, and in 2022 he entered an agreement with Grifols to help collect plasma in his name.
The Spanish Pharmaceutical Company Grifols is producing albumin for sale internationally, thanks to a new contract with Canadian blood services that allows the company to use plasma donation by -products for its own medications for profit.
Plasma constitutes more than half of a person’s blood and is rich in protein. It can be transfused directly to patients during major surgery and treating trauma, or can be usedD to make medications.
Grifols has been using plasma to make immunoglobulins in the form of a product called Suedex, exclusively for patients in Canada. But that process results in valuable by -products that could be used to produce other medications.
When CBC News asked in January what was being done with those by -products, Canadian Blood Services said they were being expelled.
But in a taps Call with investors and analysts thisMMER, CEO Nacho Abia said the company is using those Canadian by -products to create a product called albumin. And this medicine is sold internationally.
“Our first Canadian manufacturing albumin, manufactured in our facilities in Montreal, has successfully reached our patients,” said Abia.
“At this point, only albumin is producing. The plan is in the futureAnd it will also fraction products. … and wAnd do not provide specific numbers on this project, but, essentially, I think we are becoming a very solid partner with the medical care system in Canada. ”
Canadian blood services then confirmed that an agreement was reached to sell those by -products in February.
The non -profit organization would not say how much the sale of the plasma. He said the profits compensated for the cost of buying immunoglobulins for Canadians.
‘A recipe for disaster’
“The whole matter does not pass the smell test,” said Steve Staples de The Canadian Health Coalition, a non -profit organization that advocates the public medical care system.
He said that the February agreement with Grifols was a significant deviation of the commitments that patients and legislators received when the association with the company was announced in 2022.
“This arrangement is becoming increasingly complicated and the more time continues, the more difficult it will be to free ourselves from this if we find that there is a problem.”
Canadian Blood Services obtained its origin following the contaminated blood crisis in the 1980s, when more than 30,000 Canadians were infected with HIV or hepatitis C of poorly detained blood products.
Judge Horace Krever directed a public investigation and recommended the establishment of a new voluntary blood collection system, which led to the establishment of Canadian blood services, to mitigate the risks that can come when private companies pay people to donate their blood.
Staples said he fears that Canada is losing control of his blood supply, and the lack of transparency and responsibility has made him one of his main concerns.
“We really have two parallel systems that are growing now,” he said. “We have a non -profit Canadian blood service collection system throughout Canada and … we have this profit company that is in bed with the Canadian blood services that also establishes operations. It is a true mix, and I think it could be a recipe for disaster.”
Staples said it is time for the federal government to intervene and take a look at the terms of the contracts that are being signed.
“We can find ourselves in a system in which we have lost our ability to execute this in a way that puts patients first instead of earnings first,” he said.
To complicate the question of plasma collection on behalf of Canadian blood services, it is the fact that Grifols also has its own collection centers, where people pay for plasma donations.
The company now has 17 plasma centers paid in Canada, outside BC and Quebec, where payment for plasma is prohibited, and in June registered new payment rates for new donors.
Johnson said that paying for plasma should be the exception, not the rule.
“If you ever reached the point where there was a crunch and to encourage people to donate to create the necessary supply you needed to pay them, well, then that is one thing,” he said when he asked his opinion about the prohibition of pay -plasma clinics.
“But if that is not the case, you can obtain your offer voluntarily, then I think it would be a good idea that the government does.”
Donors do not know the Grifols agreement
Tom Frankish, who lives in Ottawa, puts the sleeves every week to donate plasma in a Canadian blood collection center. While I was on vacation on New Brunswick last month, he made that weekly appointment in Saint John.
He said that his son and daughter -in -law are doctors, and his mother -in -law is a transplant receiver. It is part of the reason for your dedication.
When asked if he worried that the donated blood is being used by a private for profit, he said: “Yes, that would bother me a little. Yes, absolutely.”
The donor for a long time, Mike Horgan, does not like the fact that Canadian plasma products are sold abroad.
“Yes, that’s not right,” he said. “It should definitely not afford.”
Horgan has more than 1,000 donations marked on his Canada blood services donor card. It has been its weekly ritual for decades, which only two weeks at Christmas is missing when the blood collection closes.
The retired police officer said he does not agree with a private company “trying to charge … and make money with other people.”
But it still supports Canadian blood services and will continue with its weekly plasma donations.
“It’s still a good cause.”
If you have more information about this story, fullCONTACT ASE Allyson.mccormack@cbc.ca.
