Pfizer has asked a Nigerian court to disregard an experts’ report into drug tests it conducted on Nigerian children in 1996 and which are now the subject of four court cases, the company said on Friday.
The Nigerian federal government and the northern state of Kano are suing Pfizer for a total of about $8.5 billion in damages and also pressing criminal charges over what they say was unethical testing of Trovan, an antibiotic drug.
Nigerian authorities allege that the tests, conducted in Kano during a meningitis outbreak, caused the deaths of 11 children and permanent health problems for many others. Pfizer denies the allegations.
The two civil and two criminal cases launched since May in federal and Kano state courts have so far gone from one adjournment to the next without tackling the substantive issues.
Pfizer said on Friday it had filed an application at the Federal High Court in Abuja seeking to quash the report of a Nigerian investigating committee on the Trovan tests.
“The thrust of the application is that the committee report, on which the federal and Kano state governments based all their four suits against Pfizer, (is) illegal and inaccurate,” said a statement issued on Pfizer’s behalf by a public relations firm.
The statement said the committee was not independent from government and was chaired by a Federal Ministry of Health doctor who had objected to the tests at the time and was therefore biased.
It also said Pfizer’s representatives had not been given a chance to hear the witnesses who testified before the committee and had not been shown the report when it was completed.
Government lawyers could not immediately be reached for comment.
Pfizer had already filed a statement of defence at the Kano High Court last month which said the investigating committee had disregarded important points about the Trovan tests.
“Pfizer maintains that before conducting the Trovan study in Kano, it sought and obtained all necessary approvals from relevant federal and state government agencies,” Friday’s statement said, adding that the firm had 12 letters to prove it.
“Pfizer also states that the results of the study plainly proved that Trovan helped save lives,” the statement said.
“With a survival rate of 94.4 percent, Trovan was at least as effective as the best treatment available at Kano’s Infectious Disease Hospital. The overall survival rate in Nigeria was less than 90 percent,” it said.