WINNIPEG \u2014 The private donation clinic Grifols has paused plasma collection in Canada in the months after two people who donated plasma at their Winnipeg clinics died.<\/p>\n
Health Canada says its investigations found several compliance concerns, which led it to issue a notice of a non-compliance rating on Wednesday for Grifols’ Taylor Avenue site in Winnipeg.<\/p>\n
The federal health department says those compliance concerns need to be addressed and it welcomes the operators’ decision to temporarily close its collection sites.<\/p>\n
“Health Canada will continue to work collaboratively with Grifols to ensure these concerns are addressed before any plasma collection sites can be reopened,” Health Canada spokesperson Emilie Gauduchon-Campbell wrote in an emailed statement Thursday.<\/p>\n
Health Canada also says this will have no impact on the safety and security of Canada’s blood supply.<\/p>\n
The for-profit company did not respond immediately to requests for comment but told the Globe and Mail it’s pausing plasma operations because of “unfounded attention” on its practices.<\/p>\n
Health Canada said in March that it would investigate the deaths of two people who donated plasma at two locations in Winnipeg run by Grifols.<\/p>\n
It has said the deaths happened in October and January.<\/p>\n
Grifols said in March that it had no reason to believe there was a correlation between the deaths and plasma donation. The company said it followed protocols in both cases and was conducting its own review in addition to supporting the government investigation.<\/p>\n
Noah Schulz, provincial director of the Manitoba Health Coalition, opposes Grifols for-profit plasm collection model and hopes the company shuts down its operations.<\/p>\n
“While it’s just a pause, I still think it’s a really big win for patient safety, for the blood supply safety,” he said.<\/p>\n
“This is about making sure that the blood supply is safe and that people are not exploited in vulnerable health and economic circumstances to donate to Grifols,” said Schulz.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 13, 2026.<\/p>\n
The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WINNIPEG \u2014 The private donation clinic Grifols has paused plasma collection in Canada in the months after two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[53729,53730,17,53731,4499,1855,18235,989],"class_list":["post-167359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-blood-plasma","tag-blood-supply","tag-canada","tag-compliance-concerns","tag-grifols","tag-health-canada","tag-plasma-donation","tag-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}