African Fake Vaccines Debacle Hits Merieux, SB

1 September 1996

Judge Courroye of Lyon, France, has had a potentially embarrassing dossier on his desk for over a year, involving a batch of 68,000 doses of antimeningitis vaccine allegedly sold to Nigeria by Rhone-Poulenc affiliate Pasteur Merieux and SmithKline Beecham, under the auspices of a World Health Organization initiative, according to French reports.

It is alleged that these vaccines were illicitly copied in Nigeria. According to various sources, both in Africa and France, these counterfeit vaccines, which did not and could not protect people against meningitis, were distributed in Niger in spring 1995, where they are said to have caused 3,000 deaths.

Merieux is said to have alerted the French authorities at the time of the incident, which is only now being disclosed in any detail, and has filed a formal complaint. On SB's part, a company spokesman told the Marketletter that Paul Barrett, director and vice president for SB Pharmaceuticals, Africa, confirmed that the situation exists and that SB is working with the authorities of both Nigeria and Niger to discover what is actually happening.

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