The Globe and Mail
Published Monday, Aug. 14, 2017 5:00AM EDT
Canadian Blood Services is seeking $855-million over seven years to significantly boost the amount of plasma it collects from unpaid donors to make medications, according to a confidential document that summarizes the full cost of the effort.
The national blood authority sent the provincial, territorial and federal governments a business plan in January that advocated for the opening of 40 new plasma-collection centres so that Canada could become less reliant on paid American donors for its supply of immune globulin, a plasma-derived drug for which demand is skyrocketing. Right now, Canadian Blood Services (CBS) only collects enough plasma to fill 17 per cent of Canada’s need for immune globulin. CBS wants to up that to 50 per cent.