One important fact about for-profit plasma donation

For-profit plasma donation is in the news today in Canada. Two people recently died after giving plasma at Grifols for-profit plasma clinics in Winnipeg, Manitoba, although Health Canada has yet to find a link between the plasma collections and the deaths. Today, it was reported that a Grifols clinic in Calgary, Alberta was found non-compliant during an inspection in December 2025:

The inspection found the Calgary centre didn’t accurately assess whether donors were suitable, didn’t collect blood according to its Health Canada authorization, didn’t thoroughly investigate errors and accidents, and didn’t carry out sufficient corrective and preventative actions.

This is obviously a problem for for-profit plasma collection in Canada, where the practice is already controversial. Paid plasma collection is illegal in Canada’s three largest provinces: Ontario, British Colombia, and Quebec, though Ontario allows a few for-profit clinics to operate through an agreement with Canadian Blood Services, Canada’s independent blood authority. British Colombia and Quebec together make up over 35% of Canada’s population; including Ontario, it’s nearly 80%. Besides Ontario, for-profit clinics exist in some other smaller provinces.

Vocal advocacy exists against paid plasma collection, leading to municipal resolutions against the practice in Ontario, even as clinics open. This advocacy is often premised on the fear that paid plasma will undermine voluntary donations. To my mind, the central fact in the for-profit plasma collection debate is that only a handful of countries are self-sufficient in plasma collection, and all of them allow for paid plasma collection. They are: the United States, Germany, Czechia, Austria, and Hungary (Egypt may have also recently joined the list). While other countries, like Canada, may have achieved self-sufficiency for plasma for direct infusion, no other country can meet its own needs for plasma-derived medical products. The world relies on a small number of self-sufficient countries, primarily the United States, to meet the demand for plasma products.

Denmark is hoping to lead to way to plasma self-sufficiency through voluntary donation, but as of 2024 produces only 49% of their domestic plasma consumption. In the meantime, every other country that takes a moral stand by banning domestic for-profit plasma collection is not actually rejecting paid plasma; it is merely surrendering its ability to set the terms. For-profit plasma collection should be safe and ethical, but only through domestic regulation can a country actually ensure its plasma supply is both secure and consistent with its values.