Rabat – An administrative court in Rabat has ordered the Moroccan State to compensate a woman who suffered from side effects due to the anti-COVID-19 AstraZeneca jab.
The State has to pay her MAD 250,000 ($24,964), the court said in its ruling.
The plaintiff is a university professor who filed a lawsuit in June 2022 to take issue with the country’s authorities after suffering health complications following her COVID vaccination with AstraZeneca doses.
Mustapha Baitas, the Moroccan government spokesperson,addressed the situation on Thursday in the cabinet briefing, suggesting that all the vaccines Morocco used in its campaign to combat COVID were approved and endorsed by authorized scientific committees.
He also said that the government has no problem “attending the parliament to speak on any subject.”
The plaintiff received her AstraZeneca jab in 2021. Following health complications, she had medical tests that concluded she was suffering from Guillain Barre, a rare condition in which a person’s immune system attacks the peripheral nerves.
The symptoms of this rare disease include difficulty walking without aid, inability to move legs, arms, or face paralysis, difficulty breathing, problems swallowing or chewing, among others.
The Rabat court’s ruling in favor of the plaintiff comes as Astrazneca decided this week to withdraw its COVID-19 vaccine, after admitting in court documents, for the first time, that the vaccine can cause a rare and dangerous side effect.
However, AstraZeneca also cited a decrease in demand for its vaccine as the main reason behind its decision to withdraw the product from the global vaccine market.
Notably, the pharmaceutical company said the emergence of newer alternatives adapted to target emerging variants of the COVID virus has considerably decreased global demand for its vaccine.
“Although the vaccine was found to be safe and effective overall, it carried the risk of a rare but serious side-effect, known as thrombosis with thrombocytopenia, or TTS,” The Guardian reported this week. “The rare syndrome occurred in about two to three people per 100,000 who were vaccinated with the Vaxzevria vaccine.”
