Nigerians to sue US drug company over meningitis treatment

doi:10.1136/bmj.323.7313.592

BMJ 2001;323:592 ( 15 September )

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Nigerians to sue US drug company over meningitis treatment

Carl Kovac Budapest

In what is reportedly the first such legal action in the United States, 30 families from Nigeria are suing the US based drug manufacturer Pfizer Pharmaceuticals in a federal court in New York for allegedly carrying out medical experiments on the children of foreign citizens without consent.

The move marks the latest development in a long saga about whether Pfizer used a new drug without official approval during a meningitis epidemic in Nigeria five years ago. An inquiry was set up by the Nigerian health minister, Tim Menakaya, in January this year into the allegations (BMJ 2001;322:194).

According to the suit, during a meningitis epidemic in 1996 Pfizer treated 100 children at the Infectious Diseases Hospital in Kano, Nigeria, with its antibiotic trovafloxacin (Trovan) as part of an effort to determine if the drug would be effective against bacterial meningitis.

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