Refine by MP, party, committee, province, or result type.
Health committee Absolutely. To put the challenges surrounding recruitment into perspective, I would say that, last year, we recruited more than 6,500 mothers who had agreed, meaning they had signed the famous consent form discussed earlier. As Dr. Wall said, it is perfectly normal to have to com
November 23rd, 2010Committee meeting
Marco Décelles
Health committee That is every year, in terms of ethnic groups and the various HLA tests required. Clearly, that applies to mature banks. We are not there yet, because we are still a young and rapidly growing bank. A mature bank, however, will use, on average, 2% of its cord blood units a year.
November 23rd, 2010Committee meeting
Marco Décelles
Health committee Yes, exactly. That is already the case. There are hospital centres in the Vancouver area that are performing cord blood transplants. The Children's & Women's Health Centre of British Columbia and the Vancouver General Hospital have transplanted three and six units respective
November 23rd, 2010Committee meeting
Marco Décelles
Health committee If you look at it the other way around, it is actually the province of the transplant hospital. A public bank, such as Héma-Québec's, supplies the cord blood. The hospital doing the transplant is responsible for the costs; it is the one that has to pay the bill. So if a hospital
November 23rd, 2010Committee meeting
Marco Décelles
Health committee It works the same way.
November 23rd, 2010Committee meeting
Marco Décelles
Health committee Yes, when the committee met on November 2, I believe Dr. Wall said that Canada needed between 20,000 and 50,000 units. So we are in that range with 40,000 units in Canada.
November 23rd, 2010Committee meeting
Marco Décelles
Health committee As far as cost goes, you need to keep two things in mind. What Dr. Wall just said is absolutely true. The cost of cord blood units from international banks varies between US$20,000, which is especially low, and US$30,000 or US$35,000. Units that come from Héma-Québec cost the sa
November 23rd, 2010Committee meeting
Marco Décelles
Health committee From a different perspective, everything is a matter or logistics. In order to create or preserve a unit of cord blood, bank operators have to work within a 48-hour time frame. Obviously, there are issues surrounding proximity to the processing site and airport accessibility. Tha
November 23rd, 2010Committee meeting
Marco Décelles
Health committee I will give you a very simple answer. We are working on it. In February 2011, we will be submitting our application for international accreditation. I will spare you the logistical details associated with that, but there was a lot of work we had to do internally. Regardless, as
November 23rd, 2010Committee meeting
Marco Décelles
Health committee It is demand, plain and simple. The human tissue sector is quite different, and we are just as used to providing that service as Canadian Blood Services. We operate in an open market, meaning a competitive one, so we are competing against the Americans, among others. In that kind
November 23rd, 2010Committee meeting
Marco Décelles
Health committee In terms of cord blood, Dr. Wall, in Winnipeg, has done searches for some of her patients, but we have not found any compatible units so far. You always need to find the most compatible unit. People in British Columbia have also done searches as recently as the beginning of last
November 23rd, 2010Committee meeting
Marco Décelles
Health committee It is a phenomenon in Canada, and especially Quebec, which was the leader. You can even see it in the volume. Historically, nearly 50% of transplants were done in Quebec. In Canada, it has to do with the culture of transplant specialists. Last year, 90 transplants were performed,
November 23rd, 2010Committee meeting
Marco Décelles
Health committee To do that, of course, we need to forge partnerships outside Quebec, in order to increase the inventory's ethnic diversity. So we need to form partnerships in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto and probably other regions, such as the Northwest Territories. We have the ability to proce
November 23rd, 2010Committee meeting
Marco Décelles
Health committee Excuse me, but I am not a doctor. It is Mr. Marco Décelles.
November 23rd, 2010Committee meeting
Marco Décelles
Health committee This morning, we are going to try to answer two fundamental questions. But first of all, on behalf of Héma-Québec, I would like to thank Madam Chair and the committee for the opportunity to be here today. We are very grateful. So Héma-Québec will speak to two issues this mornin
November 23rd, 2010Committee meeting
Marco Décelles