Three people appeared Thursday before a court in Nigeria on murder charges for producing an adulterated infant teething drug that has killed 84 children since last November, court officials said.
“Three suspects were charged with intention to murder and cause bodily harm to the public,” a senior official at the federal high court in Lagos told AFP, after the defendants appeared in court for the first time.
The trio — all from Lagos-based firm Barewa Pharmaceuticals — pleaded not guilty to the six counts against them.
The official said the suspects are among 12 people arrested over the deaths of young children after they were given the painkilling drug My Pikin, which means “my child” in local pidgin, in Africa’s most populous nation.
Judge Okechukwu Okeke ordered that they be remanded in custody and return to court on May 4 for further hearing.
Of the suspects, five are from Barewa Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer of My Pikin, and seven are marketers of a chemical used for the production of the drug, which was contaminated with diethylene glycol.
A spokesman for the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Jimoh Abubakar, said that though 12 suspects are in custody, investigations are under way on the other nine before they are brought to court.
“We have arraigned only those we have established water-tight evidence against,” Abubakar said.
The suspects, if convicted, faced a maximum of 15 years in prison or a fine of 500,000 naira (2,600 euros / 3,500 dollars).
My Pikin was given to teething infants to relieve sore gums, but samples of the lethal medicine were discovered to contain high levels of the poisonous solvent diethylene glycol, mostly used in brake fluid and engine coolant.
Concern about the safety of My Pikin emerged when there was an upsurge in cases at teaching hospitals in Lagos, Zaria and Ibadan of acute renal failure in children who had taken the drug.
In Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest city, Jide Idris, the state health commissioner, said 39 deaths had been reported in the metropolis.
NAFDAC arrested the owners of Barewa Pharmaceuticals and of Tranxell, which supplied the toxic chemical, and shut down their operations. The state alleges that Tranxell supplied Barewa with diethylene glycol-laced diphenhydramine hydrochloride, an antihistamine used to make paracetamol syrup.
Three-quarters of the 111 toddlers aged between two months and seven years — known to have ingested the drug — have died from kidney failure.
Fake and adulterated drugs are not uncommon in Nigeria because of the cost of imported ones and of chemicals required in their manufacture, which induce some companies to risk dangerous but cheaper substitutes.
In 1990, 109 children died after taking paracetamol laced with a compound similar to diethylene glycol and also used in engine coolants.
In a high profile multi-billion dollar case, Nigeria has sued US drug maker Pfizer after 11 children are alleged to have died and 189 others were deformed or handicapped after taking a meningitis drug test in 1996.
Pfizer on February 26 issued a statement from its US headquarters saying that a settlement “was in the best interests of all parties” but negotiations were ongoing, apparently towards an out of court deal.
Lawyers for both parties have said that agreement on damages is likely to be sealed in Rome later in March.