Two People Died After Donating Plasma in Canada. The Government Says Plasma Didn't Kill Them — But It's Cracking Down Anyway.
Health Canada has concluded that paid plasma donation did not cause the deaths of two donors at clinics run by a company called Grifols in Winnipeg. But the federal regulator is still imposing stricter rules on the Spanish company's plasma collection activities in Canada.
The two deaths happened at separate Grifols plasma collection centres in Winnipeg. One of the people who died was Rodiyat Alabede, a 22-year-old international student. The identity of the second donor has not been shared in news reports. Grifols, a Spain-based company that collects plasma and makes blood products, said in a statement it had "no reason to believe that there is a correlation between the donors' passing and plasma donation" (The Guardian).
Health Canada started its review after the deaths. By early April 2026, it found no causal link, meaning no evidence that the plasma collection procedure itself led to the fatalities. However, the regulator also announced new, tighter conditions on Grifols' plasma donation operations. The specific details of those conditions have not been made public, but they amount to more oversight, not a clean bill of health (Winnipeg CityNews; CBC).
Here is what plasma donation involves. When you donate plasma, blood is drawn from your arm and passed through a machine that separates out the plasma (a yellowish liquid rich in proteins) from the rest of your blood — the red and white cells and platelets. Those cells go back into your body. Only the plasma is kept. In Canada, all collected plasma must be tested for infections including HIV and Hepatitis. These safety rules apply whether or not the donor gets paid (Health Canada).
The deaths have reignited a long-running debate in Canada over whether people should be paid for donating plasma. Health coalitions have called for a provincial ban on paid plasma donations following the Winnipeg deaths. This push draws on historical anxiety within Canada's blood system, though the advocacy reported here is a direct response to the Grifols deaths rather than a campaign that already existed (Winnipeg CityNews).
Grifols operates beyond Winnipeg. The company runs a plasma collection centre on Quebec Avenue in Saskatoon, according to Health Canada's blood inspections database (Health Canada Drug Inspections). The new regulatory conditions imposed after the Winnipeg review will apply to Grifols' operations broadly, though exactly how they apply across its Canadian sites has not been specified in available reporting.
The broader context here is that Health Canada finds itself in a delicate position. The regulator's own investigation found no causal link, which lines up with Grifols' stance. Yet the decision to impose stricter conditions signals that the existing rules were, in the regulator's view, not enough. The message is twofold: the procedure itself was not blamed, but the company's practices warranted more oversight.
For the paid plasma industry in Canada, the episode exposes the sector's political vulnerability even when the science is on its side. Groups pushing for a ban on paid donation have long argued on grounds of safety and ethics, raising concerns about who gets selected as a donor and whether voluntary (unpaid) donation supplies enough plasma. Two donor deaths at one company's facilities, even without a proven connection to the procedure itself, fuel those arguments no matter what the regulator concluded.
The case of Rodiyat Alabede adds another layer. She was an international student and a paid plasma donor. Her death draws attention to who typically makes up the paid plasma donor base, which in many places skews toward lower-income individuals, students, and recent immigrants. While the known facts do not establish any link between her background and the cause of death, the image of a young international student dying after a paid donation at a private clinic run by a foreign company is likely to influence how the public and politicians receive Health Canada's findings.
What remains unclear from the public record is the actual cause of death in either case. Health Canada's finding of no connection to plasma donation narrows the question but does not answer it. Without that information, the regulatory outcome is a negative finding — ruling out one explanation without offering another. For Grifols, that may be enough to keep operating under the new conditions. For critics calling for a ban, the lack of a definitive alternative explanation is unlikely to convince them.
