The world’s largest drug manufacturer, Pfizer Inc., is facing criminal and civil charges in Nigeria. Nigerian officials brought the charges in early May 2007 because of a study eleven years ago in which Pfizer gave children an experimental drug for meningitis called Trovan. Pfizer says its decision to give Trovan to children saved many lives during a meningitis epidemic in 1996. However, the drug was unapproved at the time.
Nigerian officials claim that Pfizer illegally used the children as test subjects without parental consent; some of the children who took Trovan later died. Pfizer asserts that Nigerian officials knew that the Trovan study introduced a new treatment for meningococcal meningitis and claims that the treatment saved almost 200 young lives.
A year after being used in Nigeria, Trovan was approved in the United States to treat hospital-acquired infections but has since been discontinued due to FDA warnings about possible liver damage from the drug.
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