Nigeria Settles Multibillion Dollar Pfizer-Trovan Case for $75M
May 14, 2009 at 3:59 pm EST | Tags: Drugs, Legal, Scandals
After thirteen years in litigation, and thirteen years
after the now-famous clinical trial, the Nigerian state says it
has agreed to settle its multibillion-dollar for $75M.
Kano State spokesman Suleyau Sule says no final settlement is yet signed, but that state officials led by the governor of the State agreed today at a London meeting with Pfizer representatives (attorneys) to end the legal action.
Pfizer, however, said that it continues to make good progress in talks with the government but didn’t say when a final agreement might be reached. Kano State Attorney General Aliyu Umar says the deal will be finalized in June.
The lawsuit began back in 1996 after five children in Nigeria died in a meningitis clinical trial for Pfizer’s antibitoc trovafloxacin (Trovan). The trial was conducted at the height of a meningitis epidemic in northern Nigeria which killed about 12,000 people, one of the worst known meningitis outbreaks in Sub-Saharan Africa.
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While Pfizer is not on my list of favorite companies these days, I would like to remind everyone of the facts of the “Ifamous Trovan Trial”. It is true that 5 children died in the Trovan arm of the trial out of just over 100 patients in that arm, which by simple math is just under a 5% death rate. While this may seem shocking, about 10% of children on the current standard of therapy died.
So, easy to see that being in the Trovan arm of this study cut ones death rate by 50%!!! If it were my child I would have hoped that she received Trovan vs. standard of care antibiotics.
Many, many reasons to bust Pfizer’s chops (and I do), but this trial is not one of them.