Blood agency seeking $855-million in funding to boost plasma supply, document reveals
' Last month, the federal government appointed an expert panel to examine the security and sustainability of Canada’s immune globulin supply. The panel will submit their report by the end of March, 2018. Lois Shepherd, the director of transfusion medicine at Kingston Health Sciences Centre, said demand for immune globulin is rising in part because of the aging population. “Older people actually lose some of their immune function,” she said. “So in an aging population there may be more people being diagnosed with secondary immune deficiencies related to the aging phenomenon. And primary immune deficiency is being more and more frequently recognized.”
A quirk of Canada’s health-care system plays a part, too. Although funded out of the public purse, plasma medications are provided free to patients in hospital, just like blood.
“It may be that people preferentially use [immune globulin] when there are other alternatives that maybe other jurisdictions would choose to use,” Dr. Shepherd said.
The question now for the expert panel, and for the government officials reviewing CBS’s proposal, is whether Canada should spend scarce health-care dollars to collect more plasma from unpaid donors at home, or keep relying on the U.S. market for the majority of its immune globulin when that supply is not guaranteed.'
Jim
|
