A New Era For Hemovigilance in Canada

Canada is facing a significant shift in blood safety monitoring following the end of a historic hemovigilance program. The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) discontinued the country’s Blood Safety Contribution Program (BSCP) on March 31, 2026. The program, which supported surveillance activities for blood, tissue and organ-related adverse events, housed Canada’s Transfusion Transmitted Injury Surveillance System (TTISS) and the Transfusion Error Surveillance System (TESS). These surveillance systems monitored errors occurring at any point in the transfusion chain, as well as serious, moderate and selected minor transfusion-related adverse events occurring in Canadian health care settings.

Blood in Canada operates as a national system but is funded by each province. Without TTISS and TESS, hospitals and transfusion services will lose access to national-level data aggregation previously provided by the federal government. Andrew Shih, MD, FRCPC, DRCPSC, MSc, regional transfusion medicine director, Hamilton Regional Laboratory Medicine Program, and director of TTISS Ontario, noted that prior to the program’s closure, hospital-based events and errors were captured through the BSCP, while serious or unexpected events continue to be reported through Canada’s Vigilance Program. 

“With the sunsetting of the BSCP, what's largely lost on the hospital or patient-facing side is the capture of hospital-based transfusion errors and adverse events that do not relate to the intrinsic characteristics of the blood supply or actions regulated by Health Canada,” said Shih, who also serves as the chair of Canada’s National Advisory Committee for Blood and Blood Products. “That means minor events are no longer captured, and I'd argue that those matter. You've lost pickup of many so-called minor events that can sometimes signal larger problems.”