Pay-for-plasma clinic on its way
Cambridge location scheduled to open in 2025 will pay participants for blood donations
A private clinic paying people to donate their blood plasma is expected to open in Cambridge late this year or in 2025.
The clinic is going in at Unit 53, in a strip mall at 600 Hespeler Rd., near Langs Drive. It is one of five Ontario clinics that Grifols, a publicly traded pharmaceutical company in Spain, plans to open in Ontario in 2024-25.
Paying for blood and plasma donations is banned in Ontario. The Voluntary Blood Donations Act is meant to protect the voluntary public blood donor system in Ontario. “Blood donors should not be paid, except in exceptional circumstance,” the act says.
But Canadian Blood Services (CBS), the charity that runs the blood system in Canada outside of Quebec, has signed an agreement with the Spanish company to increase the availability of plasma in Canada.
“Through our agreement, Grifols will operate under the Act as an agent of Canadian Blood Services,” CBS said in an email. As an agent of the blood charity, Grifols is exempt from the prohibition, CBS argues.
It’s not clear how much Grifols would pay for plasma donations, but Canadian Plasma Resources, which Grifols recently bought and which has clinics in other provinces, pays $30-$70 per donation, with bonuses of up to $100 for frequent donors.
Plasma is used for transfusions, and to make immunoglobulins and other specialized medicines to treat life-threatening bleeding disorders, burns and immunodeficiency.
The demand for plasma for immunoglobulins has been steadily increasing worldwide, and supply
It’s not clear how much Grifols would pay for plasma donations, but Canadian Plasma Resources pays $30-$70 per donation
chain problems during the pandemic laid bare Canada’s dependency on foreign sources of plasma.
CBS now collects enough plasma to make about 17 per cent of the immunoglobulins needed in Canada. It buys the rest on the global market as finished products made from plasma, much of which comes from paid donors in the U.S.
It released a plan in 2022 to boost the supply in Canada to at least 50 per cent, by “leveraging both not-for-profit and commercial sectors,” which led to the agreement with Grifols.
CBS has opened nine of its own unpaid plasma donor centres across the country, with funding from government; more are planned to open this year; seven of the 11 will be in Ontario.
BloodWatch, an advocacy group that grew out of the Krever Inquiry into the tainted blood scandal, says the best way to expand the plasma supply in Canada is to continue expanding the voluntary donation system, not set up for-profit clinics that pay donors.
“CBS only started rolling out their plasma facilities 18 months ago. They’re meeting their targets. They’re very successful,” said BloodWatch executive director Kat Lanteigne.
Grifols says it plans to have about 15 plasma donor centres operating in Canada by next year, which would mean private clinics that pay donors would outnumber the CBS’s voluntary ones.
Payment attracts donors who are vulnerable, Lanteigne said. “People who go to sell their plasma are going there because they need money.”
Paying for donations “changes the culture of how we donate blood and plasma,” she added. Once you begin to pay donors, “it’s almost impossible to get those donors back” into the voluntary system.
Payment may also induce people to donate more often.
In Alberta, which allows paid blood donations, paid donors donate far more often than volunteers — often more than once a week, according to documents obtained by BloodWatch.
CBS says people can donate plasma every seven days, but the American Red Cross restricts plasma donations to every 28 days. A 2010 study found that plasma from paid, highfrequency donors in the U.S. had “significantly lower” total protein, albumin and other blood markers.
CBS must approve the location of any clinics Grifols opens, to ensure they don’t poach donors from CBS’s voluntary clinics.
“Canadian Blood Services has approved Cambridge, Hamilton and Whitby, Ont., as the locations of three new Grifols’ plasma collection sites as we have determined these locations will have minimal impact on national blood system operations,” CBS said in an emailed statement. “Two additional Grifols’ sites in Ontario are planned to open in the future and those locations have not yet been confirmed.”
The Ontario law was passed after three pay-for-plasma clinics were built in Hamilton and Toronto, Lanteigne notes. “We’ve had a law passed that says the collection of plasma is a public good and it’s done voluntarily.
Why is that different now?” she said.
CBS said it has been in close discussions with the Ontario Ministry of Health about its plans.
The Health Ministry did not respond to questions about how Grifols can operate pay-for-plasma clinics in Ontario, or on what approvals the province gave to allow the private clinics to proceed.
“There was no written direction from the government about the opening of these centres,” said Hannah Jensen, a spokesperson for Health Minister Sylvia Jones, in an email.
“Canadian Blood Services’ network of blood and plasma donor centres remains voluntary. Our government will continue to monitor the decisions of Canadian Blood Services to ensure it delivers a secure supply of plasma protein products to Ontarians,” Jensen said.
“Canadian Blood Services’ priority is ensuring patients in Canada continue to have access to the essential therapies they need,” CBS said in an email.
“We want to reinforce that our agreement with Grifols doesn’t change how we operate. It means that even more plasma will be collected in Canada, for people in Canada, much sooner; Grifols must use plasma they collect in Canada to make immunoglobulins exclusively for patients in Canada, reducing our reliance on the global market.”
Grifols bought a plant in Montreal to manufacture immuno-globins from Canadian plasma; it’s expected to begin operating in 2026.