Pfizer pays out to Nigerian families of meningitis drug trial victims

Source: The Guardian

The parents of four Nigerian children who died of meningitis have become the first winners of a 15-year legal battle against Pfizer over a fiercely controversial drug trial.

The world's biggest research-based pharmaceutical company announced on Thursday that it had made payments of $175,000 (£108,000) to each family. More such compensation settlements are expected to follow.

Pfizer was sued after 11 children died in a clinical trial when the northern state of Kano was hit by Africa's worst ever meningitis epidemic in 1996. A hundred children were given an experimental oral antibiotic called Trovan, while a further hundred received ceftriaxone, the "gold-standard" treatment of modern medicine.

Five children died on Trovan and six on ceftriaxone. But later it was claimed that Pfizer did not have proper consent from parents to use an experimental drug on their children and questions were raised over the documentation of the trial.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/11/pfizer-nigeria-meningitis-drug-compensation