Nigerians to sue US drug company over meningitis treatment

doi:10.1136/bmj.323.7313.592b

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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 …