ABUJA, Nigeria – Nigerian government lawyers withdrew a $7 billion civil lawsuit against Pfizer Inc. on Friday, saying they have discovered new material and plan to file what they called an even stronger case against the U.S. drug maker.

The government has accused Pfizer of taking advantage of a 1996 meningitis epidemic to test an experimental drug without authorization or full understanding of the families involved _ allegedly contributing to the deaths of some of the children and sickening others. Pfizer denies wrongdoing.

“We are here this morning to move an application for notice of discontinuance of this case. … We have planned to refile a new suit,” government lawyer Babatunde Irukera said.

Irukera said lawyers recently discovered material that suggested Pfizer committed fraud in the administration of the drug. The new suit will include these materials, along with clarifying some of the government’s original arguments.

“Some of the materials we needed to establish that Pfizer was fraudulent only came out after we filed the suit,” he said. Irukera said the earlier suit only levied a softer charge of “fraudulent representation” on the company.

Pfizer’s lawyers were not immediately available for comment.

The civil case is in addition to a federal criminal case and separate from civil and criminal cases launched at the state level in the northern state of Kano. All the cases stem from the same mid-1990s drug study in Kano’s main city, also called Kano.

Pfizer treated 100 meningitis-infected children with an experimental antibiotic, Trovan. Another 100 children, who were control patients in the study, received an approved antibiotic, ceftriaxone _ but the dose was lower than recommended, the families’ lawyers alleged.

Eleven children died _ five of those on Trovan and six in the control group, while others suffered physical disabilities and brain damage. Pfizer has always insisted its records show none of the deaths was linked to Trovan or substandard treatment, noting that the study showed a better survival rate for the patients on Trovan than those on the standard drug. Meningitis survivors sometimes sustain brain damage or other complications from the disease.

Authorities in Kano state are blaming the Pfizer controversy for widespread suspicion of government public health policies, particularly the global effort to vaccinate children against polio.

Islamic leaders in largely Muslim Kano have seized on the Pfizer controversy as evidence of a U.S.-led conspiracy. Rumors that polio vaccines spread AIDS or infertility spurred Kano and another heavily Muslim state, Zamfara, to boycott a polio vaccination campaign.

Vaccination programs restarted in Nigeria in 2004, after an 11-month boycott, but the delay set back global eradication programs. The boycott was blamed for causing an outbreak that spread polio across Africa and into the Middle East.

A service of the Associated Press(AP)