“At a certain point, there is a requirement for Health Canada to do something more,” personal injury lawyer Gary Will said during an Ontario Health Coalition press conference Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“They have the power to suspend the licence. They have the power to charge Grifols, and they haven’t done that yet.”<\/p>\n
A total of 25 serious adverse reactions,<\/a> such as cardiac arrest and pulmonary embolism, have been reported since 2018 by centres currently operated by Grifols, according to Health Canada.<\/p>\n WATCH | Donors should have been excluded, Health Canada report says: Bans on plasma donors with disease risk incorrectly lifted: Health Canada<\/p>\n A Health Canada inspection report says the for-profit company Grifols repeatedly cleared ineligible donors who were at risk for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and operated over capacity at one of its Winnipeg locations.<\/p>\n Will said his firm is exploring legal options for people impacted. He believes there are likely more injured donors.\u00a0<\/p>\n “We’re at risk of potentially ending up in another tainted blood crisis <\/a>if we don’t address these shortcomings,” said Sara Labelle, a medical laboratory technologist who co-chairs the Ontario Health Coalition’s blood Safety committee, referring to the infection of thousands of Canadians<\/a> with HIV or hepatitis C from poorly screened blood products in the 1980s.<\/p>\n Deemed eligible despite disease risk: report<\/p>\n Grifols incorrectly deemed multiple banned donors at risk of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease as eligible, “which could compromise the safety of the blood,” according to Health Canada’s March 30 report, which detailed the regulator’s inspection of Grifols’s head office in Oakville, Ont.<\/p>\n Two people were barred from donating due to risks related to a rare subtype of Creutzfeld-Jakob that comes from eating beef infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or “mad cow disease.” That variant can be transmitted through blood.\u00a0<\/p>\n The two were initially deferred, but those deferrals were lifted, even though both donors “continued to meet the exclusion criteria requiring an indefinite deferral,” the report said.\u00a0<\/p>\n On May 23, 2025, Grifols also lifted multiple deferrals for donors who should have been excluded for a family history of Creutzfeld-Jakob, according to Health Canada’s inspection report.\u00a0<\/p>\n While Grifols reinstated a deferral that was incorrectly lifted on one ineligible donor, no investigation was conducted, and the list of other deferred donors wasn’t checked, the report says. <\/p>\n As a result, multiple other ineligible donors had their Creutzfeld-Jakob-related deferrals lifted on May 28, 2025, it says.<\/p>\n “The incomplete investigation did not adequately mitigate the risk and ensure the safety of the blood,” the report says. It does not say whether any plasma was collected from these donors.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1783993271_741_default.jpg\")
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Grifols changed its Creutzfeld-Jakob exclusion criteria in March 2025 after receiving approval from Health Canada and lifted deferrals from some previously excluded donors as a result, a company spokesperson said. (CBC)<\/p>\n