The question of blood-system safety remains a flashpoint in Canada, two decades after the “tainted blood” scandal of the late ’80s and early ’90s. More than 20,000 Canadians became infected with HIV and hepatitis C due to improperly screened blood and plasma from paid donors in Haiti and American skid rows. The tragedy led to the creation of Canadian Blood Services and Héma-Québec in 1998, set up to rebuild and oversee the blood system… The World Health Organization agrees: it wants all countries to move to unpaid donation systems by 2020 due to studies pointing to volunteers having the lowest prevalence of blood-borne infections.
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