Grifols Pauses All Plasma Collections in Canada After Two Donor Deaths and Regulatory Crackdown
Grifols, the Spanish healthcare company that runs 17 plasma donation clinics across Canada and is the country's only private plasma collection operator, has temporarily halted all plasma collections following the deaths of two donors and a formal notice of non-compliance from Health Canada The Guardian.
The company told Health Canada it was suspending collections on a Wednesday — the same day the regulator issued its non-compliance notice for failures to follow blood regulations. The paired announcements bring to a head a regulatory scrutiny process that had been building since the deaths were first reported in March 2026.
Both donors who died were in Manitoba. One has been identified as Rodiyat Alabede, a 22-year-old international student and aspiring social worker who donated plasma at a Grifols clinic in Winnipeg on 25 October 2025. An autopsy found that Alabede died of cardiac arrest shortly after the donation. Health Canada, however, reported finding no causal link between the plasma donation and her death. The second death occurred in January 2026, several months after the first.
The regulatory picture grew more troubling in May 2026, when Health Canada inspection reports identified multiple deficiencies across Grifols clinics. The findings included inadequate staff training, failures in standard operating procedures, poor record keeping, and a failure to fix previously identified issues. Inspectors also documented that Grifols staff did not stop plasma collection when alarms sounded during procedures, and described the company's incident reporting as incomplete and inaccurate.
How Grifols' Canadian clinics operate adds context to those deficiencies. Before the pause, the company allowed donors to give plasma twice weekly and paid up to C$100 (approximately £55) per donation. That compensation model is permitted in some Canadian jurisdictions but not others: provinces and territories decide individually whether paid plasma clinics may operate. British Columbia and Quebec prohibit the practice; Manitoba allows it.
Plasma is the liquid portion of blood — the fluid that carries red and white blood cells, platelets, and nutrients. Canada's safety framework for plasma rests on multiple layers. All donations must be tested for infectious diseases including HIV and Hepatitis. Health Canada has maintained that plasma from paid and unpaid donors is equally safe due to strict protocols governing collection, testing, and handling at every stage Health Canada. The May inspection findings, however, point to breakdowns in how those protocols were carried out, not in the testing system itself.
Grifols' footprint in Canada extends beyond its private clinics. The company holds a 15-year renewable collaboration agreement with Canadian Blood Services, the national blood authority, to supply plasma-based medicines Reuters. Grifols Therapeutics LLC also produces a rabies vaccine prepared from pooled human plasma of screened donors immunized with rabies vaccine Public Health Agency of Canada. The scope of these arrangements means the collection pause and non-compliance finding carry implications beyond the clinic network directly affected.
The gap between Health Canada's finding that Alabede's death was not linked to plasma donation and the regulator's subsequent identification of serious procedural failures at Grifols clinics is worth examining. The agency's conclusion addressed what caused a specific fatality. The inspection reports addressed systemic operational deficiencies. These are distinct regulatory questions. The non-compliance notice does not require a proven causal link to a donor death; it hinges on whether the clinics followed blood regulations governing their operations.
The broader context here extends to the paid plasma donation model itself. Canada's patchwork of provincial rules means that policy debates about compensated plasma collection unfold jurisdiction by jurisdiction rather than nationally. The Grifols inspection findings, particularly the failure to respond to alarms during active collection, give regulators and provincial authorities a concrete case study of what can go wrong when operational safeguards break down in a paid-donation setting. Whether this episode shifts the policy calculus in provinces that currently permit paid plasma, or hardens positions in those that do not, will depend on the investigation's conclusions and on Grifols' corrective actions.
For now, all 17 Grifols clinics across Canada are not collecting plasma. The pause has no announced end date. Health Canada's investigation continues.
