Here is a story from Sunday trust:
United States pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer, may have finally agreed to release the sum of $75 million (about N11.250 billion) as compensation over the 1996 Trovan drug test in Kano State, Sunday Trust can authoritatively report.
The experiment left over 200 persons, mainly children, with deformities. Some have died.
A source close to the company told Sunday Trust last night in a telephone interview that of the amount, $35 million is going to be shared among the victims as compensation; $30 million will be paid to Kano State Government for the construction of modern hospitals; and the remaining $10 million will be paid to cover litigation expenses by government on behalf of the victims.
This development, it was gathered, was the drug company's response to a proposal submitted to it in a meeting held last month in Abuja by the stakeholders' delegation that included the Kano State Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice, Aliyu Umar, a representative of the victims' parents, Mustapha Maisikeli, Barrister Maryam Uwais, and the state Commissioner for Health, Hajiya Aisha Isiyaku Kiru, the former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon (rtd) and former American President Jimmy Carter. The two former presidents have been brokering an out-of-court resolution of the issue. It was gathered also that General Gowon has intimated Governor Ibrahim Shekarau about the giant company’s acceptance of the proposal. The deal will be sealed in Rome in March this year.
“The money would be finally released to us in March in Rome when we are going to meet with General Gowon and Pfizer’s representatives to finalise the deal,” a parent of a victim told this newspaper.
According to him, it is only when the agreement is written and the money received that the stakeholders would withdraw both the civil and criminal suits pending against Pfizer.
When Sunday Trust contacted the drug company over the issue, its spokesman Christopher Loder, said in a statement issued in New York that “the company does not believe it is appropriate to comment on the substance of its discussions with the governments at this time”.
“The Company has made and continued to make serious efforts to reach an appropriate and amicable resolution of the Nigerian federal and Kano state cases pertaining to Trovan. The settlement process is ongoing, and Pfizer is prepared to stay at the negotiating table until agreement are reached. We believe that settlement is in the best interest of all parties, and will avoid the continued cost and distraction of litigation, and can help improve and expand health care for the people of Nigeria,” the statement said.
This settlement follows months of negotiations between Pfizer and the Kano state government, representing the victims. The talks were brokered by General Gowon and US former president Jimmy Carter.
It could be recalled that Kano State had filed civil and criminal suits against Pfizer, demanding $2.75 billion in compensation for what it said was an illegal test of the meningitis vaccine Trovan on 200 children in 1996.
Eleven of those children are alleged to have died from the drug test which also caused deformities in 189 others. A separate $6.5 billion suit has been lodged against the US drug firm by the Nigerian federal government.
Pfizer has denied any wrong-doing and insisted that the trial conformed to ethical practices and was carried out with the consent of the Nigerian government, insisting that “the company has said all along that all clinical evidence points to the fact that any deaths or injuries were the direct result of the devastating meningitis epidemic, and not the treatment provided to patients in the Trovan clinical study. With a survival rate of 94.4%, Trovan helped save lives and was at least as effective as the best treatment available at Kano’s Infectious Disease Hospital (IDH). For patients who did not participate in the Trovan clinical study, the survival rate was slightly less than 90%,” Pfizer insisted in a statement.
A source closed to the victims told our reporter in confidence that it was not true the rumour going round that it was the government that pressurized them to accept the drug giant’s proposal. The decision, he said, was borne out of sympathy with the victims and their parents, as some of them had already died of frustration.