She did not go to Grifols to die.
In the quiet act of giving — an offering of plasma meant to sustain another life — a 22-year-old student from Nigeria named Rodiyat Alabede lost her own in a Winnipeg clinic in October 2025. What followed was not resolution but accumulation: inspection reports revealing systemic failures, discrepancies between official accounts and autopsy findings, and a second death at another facility three months later. Against the long shadow of Canada's contaminated blood scandal, patient advocates are now asking whether the machinery of oversight is working — or merely appearing to.
- Rodiyat Alabede, a 22-year-old international student with an undetected enlarged heart, died of cardiac arrest after donating plasma at a Grifols facility — yet Health Canada closed the case without establishing a link.
- Inspection reports conducted immediately after her death exposed a facility in dysfunction: staff untrained on machine alarms, competency tests retaken up to four times with identical questions, and incomplete reporting from Grifols.
- A second person died at a separate Grifols location in Winnipeg just three months later, prompting internal concern within Health Canada — even as the agency's public position remained unchanged.
- Advocates have identified what they call profound discrepancies between the medical examiner's autopsy and Health Canada's official summary, including conflicting figures on how much plasma was actually collected.
- Patient advocates and the family's representative have written to Prime Minister Mark Carney demanding the investigation be reopened and Grifols' license suspended — while Alabede's family has yet to receive any direct outreach from officials.
- All three plasma donation deaths documented in Canada over the past decade occurred in Manitoba, casting the current failures against the unhealed memory of the 1980s contaminated blood crisis.
Rodiyat Alabede came to Canada from Nigeria to study social work at the University of Winnipeg. She was 22 years old. In October 2025, she went to a Grifols plasma donation facility in Winnipeg — not for herself, but to help others. She died of cardiac arrest shortly after the donation. Health Canada investigated and found no connection. The case was considered closed.
It did not stay closed. Patient advocate Kat Lanteigne and others spent months reviewing the autopsy and Health Canada's official medical summary. What they found was troubling: Alabede had cardiomegaly, an enlarged heart — a condition that would have placed serious strain on her body during donation. There is no evidence, Lanteigne says, that the facility screened her properly or monitored her safely throughout the process.
Health Canada's own inspection reports, conducted in the immediate aftermath of Alabede's death, revealed a facility struggling with basic competency. Staff did not know how to respond to machine alarms designed to signal dangerous conditions. Employees were permitted to retake failed competency tests up to four times using the same questions. Reporting from Grifols was found to be incomplete and inaccurate. Whether alarms sounded during Alabede's donation — and whether anyone responded — remains unknown.
Three months after her death, another person died while donating plasma at a different Grifols location in Winnipeg. Internal Health Canada emails from February reflect concern within the agency following this second fatality, yet the official position has not shifted. Lanteigne describes "profound" discrepancies between the medical examiner's findings and Health Canada's March summary — including significantly different figures for the volume of plasma collected.
The broader pattern is difficult to ignore. Of eight documented non-compliance findings in Canadian blood inspections since 2016, half involved Grifols facilities. All three plasma donation deaths recorded in Canada over the past decade occurred in Manitoba. The questions being raised now echo a darker chapter: the 1980s and early 1990s contaminated blood scandal, in which thousands of Canadians were infected with HIV and hepatitis C through tainted blood products.
Lanteigne and other advocates have written to Prime Minister Mark Carney calling for the investigation to be reopened and Grifols' license suspended pending review. Grifols has said it submitted action plans to Health Canada but has not directly addressed the safety allegations. No official has contacted Alabede's family to help them understand what happened to her. "She did not go to Grifols to die," Lanteigne said.
Rodiyat Alabede was 22 years old, an international student from Nigeria studying social work at the University of Winnipeg. In October 2025, she went to a plasma donation facility operated by Grifols, a Spanish healthcare company, to give blood plasma. She died of cardiac arrest shortly after the donation. Health Canada investigated and concluded there was no connection between the plasma donation and her death. The case appeared closed.
But patient advocates and the family's representative, Kat Lanteigne, have spent months examining the autopsy report and Health Canada's official medical summary. What they found has prompted them to demand a new investigation. They describe a "perfect storm" of safety failures—lax protocols, poorly trained staff, and what they characterize as significant discrepancies between what the medical examiner documented and what Health Canada reported to legislators.
The autopsy revealed that Alabede had cardiomegaly, an enlarged heart. This condition would have placed severe strain on her body during plasma donation. Lanteigne says there is no evidence the facility screened her properly or monitored her donation safely. More troubling, Health Canada's own inspection reports—conducted immediately after Alabede's death—paint a picture of systemic dysfunction at the Winnipeg site. Staff members were not trained to operate the machines safely. They did not know how to respond to alarms that signal dangerous conditions. In some cases, staff were allowed to retake failed competency tests up to four times, with the same questions each time, before any corrective action was taken. The inspection also found incomplete and inaccurate reporting from Grifols.
Lanteigne believes that during Alabede's donation, alarms went off instructing staff to stop the process. Whether those alarms were heeded remains unclear. "We don't know whether they screened her properly. We don't know whether they responded to her donation process properly," Lanteigne said. She and others have written to Prime Minister Mark Carney demanding that the investigation be reopened and that Grifols' license be suspended pending review.
The pattern extends beyond Winnipeg. Of eight documented instances of non-compliance in blood inspections dating back to 2016, half involved Grifols facilities. Issues at the Winnipeg site date back to 2022. Three months after Alabede's death, another person died while donating plasma at a different Grifols location in Winnipeg. Internal emails from Health Canada officials, dated February, show concern within the agency after this second fatality. Yet Health Canada's official position remains that there is no linkage between plasma donation and Alabede's death.
Lanteigne says there are "profound" discrepancies between the medical examiner's autopsy and Health Canada's March medical summary—including dramatically different volumes of plasma collected during the donation. She is troubled that no official has reached out to Alabede's family to help them understand what happened. "Rodiyat donated that day to save the life of another person," Lanteigne said. "She did not go to Grifols to die."
Plasma deaths are rare in Canada. Only three have been documented in the past decade, and all three occurred in Manitoba. The case sits against the shadow of a national scandal from the 1980s and early 1990s, when thousands of Canadians were infected with HIV and hepatitis C through contaminated blood products. That history makes the current questions about oversight and transparency all the more urgent. Grifols has said it submitted action plans to Health Canada and will work to meet license requirements, but has not directly addressed the allegations of safety failures or the family's call for a new investigation.
Citações Notáveis
We don't know whether they screened her properly. We don't know whether they responded to her donation process properly.— Kat Lanteigne, safe blood campaigner representing Alabede's family
Nobody has helped this family to find answers as to what happened to their daughter.— Kat Lanteigne
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why does it matter that this happened at a Grifols facility specifically, rather than just any plasma donation center?
Because the inspection records show a pattern. Half of all documented non-compliance cases in blood inspections over the last decade involved Grifols. This wasn't an isolated mistake—it suggests systemic problems with how that company operates.
The autopsy found an enlarged heart. Shouldn't that have been caught before she donated?
That's exactly the question. We don't know if they screened her for that condition. The inspection reports show staff weren't properly trained to recognize warning signs or respond to machine alarms. So even if screening happened, the response might have been inadequate.
What does it mean that staff could retake the same test four times?
It means the company wasn't actually ensuring competency. If you can take the same quiz multiple times without the questions changing, you're not learning—you're just memorizing answers. Staff were operating machines that control blood extraction without real knowledge of what they were doing.
Health Canada investigated and found no link. Why don't advocates trust that conclusion?
Because the autopsy and Health Canada's official summary contain different details—different volumes of plasma collected, for instance. And because the inspection reports, which Health Canada itself wrote, document serious failures that happened during her donation. Those two things don't align.
Is there evidence the alarms actually went off during her donation?
Lanteigne believes they did, based on what happened and the inspection findings. But that's part of why she's calling for a new investigation—to establish what actually occurred in those final moments.
Why write to the Prime Minister now, months later?
Because the family still has no answers. No official has explained what happened or why. A second person died at another Winnipeg site three months after Rodiyat. That pattern suggests the problems weren't fixed, and it raises the stakes for getting this right.