Morning Briefing

Drugmaker Merck & Co. announced Wednesday at the Clinton Global Initiative's (CGI) annual meeting in New York that it will "donate more than $500 million of its Gardasil cervical cancer vaccine" with the goal of improving women's health in developing countries, Bloomberg reports. The vaccine works by preventing strains of the human papillomavirus that cause 70 percent of cervical cancer cases. The Netherlands-based company Qiagen NV said it "will donate tests to screen patients to determine if they have certain strains" of the sexually transmitted virus, according to the news service (Pettypiece, 9/23).