Protection of fundamental human rights by improving patient access to plasma-derived therapies and donor health...

The main use of plasma has evolved into market-driven plasma-derived medicinal products (PDMPs), but it still requires donors. Availability of PDMPs in access to care is often considered restrictively, in terms of volumes of plasma required for production and whether or not to remunerate donors. Unfortunately, this leads to an inability to meet today's challenges, both in terms of patient access to treatment and donor protection.

Here we review how the current challenges can be held under two major human fundamental rights and their associated ethical principles: the right to health protection and the right to human dignity.

Our research shows how advantageous it could be to reposition the fundamental right to health protection as an input parameter for decisions on the transfusion and plasma supply chain, as this would enable reconciliation of both patient access to these therapies and the protection of donors. This objective means that actions must be prioritized on parameters that do not impact human rights so that the plasma donated is fully exploited and the donors adequately protected.

Decisions could be made within the remit of human rights, and finally go over the opposition between access to care and donor health protection. As PDMPs have created a kind of international human interdependence, it is our responsibility to place both patients and donors under the umbrella of fundamental human rights, to act not as if a choice has to be made between the two, but in ways that protect them both.