WINNIPEG — Rodiyat Alabede, a 22-year-old international student at the University of Winnipeg, died of cardiac arrest in October 2025 shortly after donating plasma at a Winnipeg facility operated by Grifols. Health Canada inspection reports subsequently identified deficiencies at the site, and campaigners have written to Prime Minister Mark Carney asking that the investigation into her death be reopened and that Grifols's license be suspended on an interim basis.

An autopsy completed within two days of Alabede's death found she had cardiomegaly. An initial Health Canada investigation found no links between the plasma donation and her death, and the agency's March medical summary stated there was no linkage between the donation and the death. Alabede had moved to Canada from Nigeria to pursue her goal of becoming a social worker.

Health Canada inspection reports identified poor staff training, failures in standard operating procedures, poor record keeping, and a failure to remedy past issues at the Grifols facility. Inspectors found issues at the Winnipeg site dating back to 2022. In some cases, staff were allowed up to four retakes of a failed quiz on operating procedures and safe use of machines before corrective action was taken, and the quiz questions were not changed between attempts. Reports also flagged staff competency operating plasma collection machines, including how to respond to alarms, and found that staff did not stop plasma collection when alarms went off. The reports described Grifols's reporting as incomplete and inaccurate.

"When Rodiyat was donating, we believe that alarms were going off instructing the staff members to stop her donation, and that was possibly not adhered to." safe blood campaigner Kat Lanteigne said. Lanteigne and others wrote to Carney requesting that the investigation be reopened. "There were profound discrepancies between the medical examiner's report and the report that Health Canada has distributed to legislators, including dramatically different volumes of plasma collected." she said.

Three months after Alabede's death, another person died while donating plasma at a different location in Winnipeg. Only three plasma donation fatalities have been documented in Canada in the last decade, all in Manitoba. Health Canada said it conducted immediate visits to the collection centres after each reported fatality and that records indicated standard operating procedures were being followed. The agency's director general of compliance enforcement expressed concern after the second death in a chain of internal emails from February.

Of eight documented instances of non-compliance for blood inspections dating back to 2016, Grifols facilities made up half of all cases. Failures identified at other Grifols inspection sites included insufficient validation, calibration, cleaning or maintenance of critical equipment, and records that were not always accurate, complete, legible, indelible, or readily retrievable.

Grifols said it had no reason to believe there is a correlation between the donors' passing and plasma donation. The company said it had submitted detailed action plans to Health Canada for immediate implementation and would work closely with the agency to meet its license requirements.

"Nobody has helped this family to find answers as to what happened to their daughter." Lanteigne said. "Rodiyat donated that day to save the life of another person. She did not go to Grifols to die."