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A Grifols plasma donation site in Whitby, Ont., one of sixteen locations across Canada. The company is reopening one site in Edmonton and one in Winnipeg, in co-ordination with Health Canada.Shay Conroy/The Globe and Mail
Grifols, Canada’s only major commercial collector of blood plasma, says it will gradually begin reopening its centres across the country starting Tuesday.
The Barcelona-headquartered company announced in August it was pausing collections at its 17 Canadian centres after a series of critical Health Canada inspections and public outcry over the deaths of two donors.
Grifols said it is reopening two locations – in Edmonton’s Windermere neighbourhood, and in Winnipeg on Innovation Drive – for a limited number of appointments.
The company said it has used the two-month pause for “a broad program of enhancements,” including retraining employees and strengthening operating procedures. Grifols said it is reopening in co-ordination with Health Canada.
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Grifols did not provide specific examples of what it is changing about its operations.
Health Canada said staff have visited centres to verify that the company has taken corrective actions in response to the regulator’s concerns.
“Grifols is expected to demonstrate ongoing compliance as operations resume,” spokesperson Karine LeBlanc said in a statement.
Health Canada said the licence for Grifols’s location on Taylor Avenue in Winnipeg remains suspended. The regulator had taken the unprecedented step of suspending that licence after finding issues with the centre’s assessment of donor suitability and that its staff had not thoroughly investigated some errors.
Taylor Avenue was also the site of a donation last year by a 22-year-old university student named Rodiyat Alabede, who began having heart problems during the donation and was pronounced dead at a hospital shortly afterward.
A Health Canada report later said Grifols staff should have terminated Ms. Alabede’s donation early because of alerts that appeared on the donation machine.
In April, Health Canada said the deaths of Ms. Alabede and another Winnipeg donor in January had “no linkage” to their donation activities. However, Ms. Alabede’s family and a series of Globe and Mail stories later identified discrepancies in Health Canada’s assessment. The agency later said it “does not determine the cause of death, including whether the donation process may have contributed to a death.”
Other Health Canada inspections of Grifols sites in recent months identified problems such as donors displaying bruising and puncture marks on their arms, or key medical staff not always being present.
Plasma is a gold-coloured fluid found in blood that is used to produce some types of medicine, such as immunoglobulin.
Grifols operates in Canada in partnership with Canadian Blood Services, which spends more than $1-billion a year on plasma-derived drugs and related pharmaceutical products.
One key difference between the two organizations is that Grifols pays donors, while CBS does not.
How much Grifols will pay donors going forward is unclear. Grifols’s Canadian website had previously published a chart that laid out a formula for payments ranging from $40 to $100 a donation, depending on the amount of plasma and frequency of donation.
The company’s new Canadian website does not provide such a chart. It says donors can download the Grifols app to find payment information. It also says payment may vary by centre and is subject to change.
Grifols did not say how much it will pay donors when asked by The Globe on Tuesday.
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On the reopening, CBS said in an unsigned statement that it believed Grifols was taking “prudent and effective steps” to improve operations.
CBS said it “worked closely” with Grifols and reviewed its reopening plan, but added Health Canada is responsible for ensuring Grifols complies with federal regulations.
The charity said its partnership with the company is still needed to achieve its goal of greater domestic production of plasma-derived drugs.
But public-health groups have criticized the deal between CBS and Grifols since it was signed in 2022.
Jason MacLean, chair of the Canadian Health Coalition, said details of the confidential contract should finally be released so Canadians can better understand how the company is operating.
He said he is concerned that the company has not demonstrated its operations are safer now after Health Canada inspectors discovered infractions over a long period of time. “They’re just saying that they’re reopening, and there’s no accountability to it,” he said.
The office of federal Health Minister Marjorie Michel declined to comment on the reopening.
Health Canada said Tuesday it would increase oversight of Grifols’s locations, including through unannounced inspections.
An online federal database of inspections shows Health Canada has not yet completed a review of Grifols’s location in west Toronto, which opened last year. There are also no records of inspections at two other locations in Ontario that opened last year − in north Toronto and Cambridge − or at Grifols’s Halifax site.
Health Canada did not respond Tuesday to a question about the uninspected locations.