Health committee  What I'm saying is that if you look at the paid plasma system and the unpaid blood system, the donors coming in may indeed have different seroprevalence rates for hepatitis and HIV. What we cannot say categorically is that it's simply because you're paying them. They collect in

Health committee  It's a little bit of yes and no, Mr. Davies. What I'm saying is that when you look at residual risk of the finished product, there is absolutely no difference between plasma products made from remunerated donors and plasma products made—

Health committee  I'll perhaps begin. I made that comment a few minutes ago. I think it's a very important question. Certainly when Canadian Blood Services began its work in 1998, we initially made extensive outreach to the patient communities, because they were really the ones who bore the brun

Health committee  Again, I'll perhaps provide the answer that I gave to Dr. Eyolfson. Dr. Devine can add to it. We do not believe that it is a matter of randomly choosing a time period. The evidence was gathered in 2013 to support our five-year submission. The scientific evidence showed at the t

Health committee  I'll try to answer briefly. It's a complicated set of questions, Mr. Davies, but the short answer is that in blood donor systems around the world, such as Canadian Blood Services and many organizations like ours around the world, we do not pay donors. That's been a long-standing

Health committee  That's right.

Health committee  I'll make one short comment, Dr. Eyolfson, and then Dr. Devine can add to it. The intent of the work we're going to do in January is really to examine two principal policy directions. Are we simply seeking to further shorten the time period but to keep it as an MSM policy? Or ar

Health committee  That's correct.

Health committee  As I mentioned in my remarks, we do follow very closely the Public Health Agency of Canada's published data. We actually have it in front of us. It is true that the most recent set of published data, the 2014 data, show that for the prevalence of HIV, amongst all HIV cases, 54.3%

Health committee  In 2011, it was about 50%, and in the 2014 reported data, it was 54%. It's essentially been the same for quite a number of years. Dr. Devine has more information on this as well.

Health committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and committee members, for the opportunity to discuss the blood donor eligibility criteria for MSM. As you are aware, this is a sensitive and emotionally charged topic involving the people on both sides of the donation experience: the blood donor

Health committee  The federal government has virtually no role in funding or financing the operations of Canadian Blood Services. We are funded by the collective of the provinces and territories for all the products and services that we provide to Canadian patients. The sole exception to that is t

Health committee  If I understand your question correctly, as I said to Mr. Davies, I do think the model that we use for procuring, acquiring, distributing, and monitoring the utilization of these expensive biological drugs is a model that could be replicated for other drugs in the country, althou

Health committee  I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. None of our products go through retail pharmacies. That is correct, but all our chemotherapy drugs are administered in hospital, so I think there are many other classes of drugs that are quite similar to those we distribute.

Health committee  It's a very good question, Mr. Davies. My answer, just very briefly, as certainly I am no expert in national pharmacare in all its various dimensions, is that I do believe the model we operate is worthy of extensive analysis and research. I believe it is replicable in some ways f