THE Kano State government has sued drug maker, Pfizer, for its alleged role in the deaths of children who received an unapproved drug during a meningitis epidemic in 1996, court papers showed on Wednesday.

Pfizer, the world’s biggest drug maker, said in a statement that the allegations were untrue and it acted ethically.

The attorney general of Kano State filed five claims for damages totalling $2.075 billion before a state high court.

The defendants are Pfizer, its Nigerian subsidiary and seven individuals who worked for the companies in 1996.

“The plaintiff contends that prior to the treatment by the first defendant (Pfizer), the children treated... which children number 200, did not have the medical conditions or disorders which they suffered after being treated,” the suit said.

Officials in Kano have alleged for years that Pfizer’s actions resulted in the deaths of some of the children and left others deaf, paralysed, blind or brain-damaged.

Court sources said the state government had also filed criminal charges against Pfizer.

The state government alleged that Pfizer selected children and infants from crowds at a makeshift epidemic camp in Kano and gave about half of the group the antibiotic Trovan, which it said was untested at the time.

The legal dispute has been going on for years. A U.S. federal judge in 2005 dismissed a lawsuit that accused Pfizer of not properly warning Nigerian families about the risk of Trovan, saying it should be heard in a Nigerian court.

Pfizer said the clinical trial was conducted with the full knowledge of the Nigerian government “and in a responsible and ethical way consistent with the company’s abiding commitment to patient safety”.

The company said that at the time of the meningitis outbreak, Trovan was in late-stage development and had been evaluated in 5,000 patients.

The Washington Post in the United States said it obtained internal Pfizer records that showed five children died after being treated with Trovan.

However, “there is no indication in the documents that the drug was responsible for the deaths. Six children died while taking the comparison drug,” the paper said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared Trovan for adult use in 1997 but did not approve the drug for use by American children.