As both Kano State and the Federal Government resume their legal battle against Pfizer over the antibiotic clinical trial in 1996, which allegedly killed 200 children in Kano, there were strong indications during the weekend that the parties to the case might settle out of court, according to a report on AllAfrica.com, citing intervention by a respected traditional ruler from Kano State.

Meanwhile, an unnamed source in the Kano State attorney-general’s office said despite “exaggerated claims in many media stories” regarding the children who allegedly suffered death or injury in the study, the Kano government cites 57 names in its amended criminal complaint, which means that 143 patients - nearly three-fourths of all the patients in the study - were not included in the complaint.

“So based on the government’s own assessment, we are talking only about 57 patients, and there are many doubts and question marks about these,” the source stated.

“A substantial portion of the 57 names cited in the complaint - at least one-third (18) and as many as two-thirds (42) - do not match the patient information included in the government’s Nasidi report; in other words, as many as two-thirds of the patients named in the court case do not appear to have been in the study at all based on the patient information in the Nasidi report that lists the initials for all 200 study participants, of the 57 separate individuals named in the Kano clinical complaint, 18 do not match at all the initials and/or gender listed in the patients list in the Nasidi report.”

“If one assumes that the first initial should match the first name and the second initial should match the middle or last name from the patients list, then there are at least 22 people for whom there is no possible match. If one assumes that the first initial should match the first name and the second initial should match the last name from the patient list, then there are at least 42 people for whom there is no possible match.”

The source, a lawyer in the attorney general’s office, added that no one should conclude from this analysis that the remaining patients whose initials match participated in the study, saying, “Given the significant number of patient names in the complaint that do not appear to have been in the study, any reasonable individual would conclude that there are serious questions about the accuracy of the Kano government’s claims.”

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