Pfizer doctors had arrived with their briefcases full of medicines in the shattered hospital for infectious diseases in the city of Kano, in northern Nigeria. It was 1996 and a meningitis epidemic was killing thousands of people. Theirs seemed like a humanitarian mission and when they chose to treat 200 sick children, the parents considered themselves lucky. Little did they know their children were about to experiment the Trovan, a new medicine which, in the hopes of the pharmaceutical company, would become the broad-spectrum antibiotic of the future. But the drug did not have the desired effect, so much so that Trovan is no longer on the market today. Eleven children died and another 189 were left deaf, blind or with permanent brain damage. So the Pfizer team packed up and left, forgetting the sick people lining up in front of their office.
Fifteen years later those little ones got justice. Last Thursday, Pfizer began to compensate the families of four children who received a check for 122,000 euros each. Four other children who have been malformed will receive compensation according to the level of disability (left here Mrs. Abu Madaki with her son Firdausi). “We are happy – declared the pharmaceutical company in a press release – that the first plaintiffs have been compensated. It is a historic milestone in the implementation of the agreement between Kano State and Pfizer”.
In April 2009, the pharmaceutical company agreed to pay 75 million dollars (56 million euros) as compensation to local authorities. A part of the money (35 million dollars) was intended for the families of the victims and for handicapped children: like the then fourteen-year-old Hajara, who became deaf and dumb or like Anas Mohammadu who dreams of being a soldier at night but who is nicknamed "scrawl" at school » because her legs look like they're made of shortbread and drool comes out of her mouth all the time. Another 30 million would be used to refurbish the infectious disease hospital and the rest will be used to cover the legal costs incurred by the State of Kano in the various proceedings.
But after two years things are slow. The decision of who to compensate and how much is entrusted to an independent commission that has no ties to either Pfizer or the Kano government. Ten months ago 546 plaintiffs were subjected to DNA tests to prove that the children were their children but so far only 8 results have arrived. Families are getting impatient. “I spoke to my lawyer – says a man who lost his daughter due to experimentation -, we still don't know when they will pay me. We are tired. Our children have died and others are crippled. We want to close this story now." "We were promised a response within six weeks," said Surajo Hassan, who has a grandson who has become deaf from the drug.
To fold the pharmaceutical giant in 2009 were two ordinary lawyers: the young Nigerian Etigwe Uwo and the Connecticut divorce lawyer Richard P. Altschule
