Gender & Health

A Kazakh oil consortium has been accused of "mass poisoning" after 25 school children and four teachers passed out almost simultaneously at a school in Berezovka village in northwest Kazakhstan. The incident is the latest in a decade of allegations of pollution caused by the neighboring Karachaganak oil field. Read More

Uruguay has presented a 500 page document to defend itself against an international lawsuit challenging the country's tough tobacco packaging regulations. The claim was brought by Philip Morris, the global tobacco giant, at the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) in Washington DC. Read More

Actavis, the world's third-largest generic drug manufacturer, has been sued by New York state to prevent it from forcing patients to take a new version of a popular Alzheimer's drug. The company is attempting to hook patients on an extended release version before its U.S. patent expires next year. Read More

Gilead Sciences of San Francisco is under investigation by the U.S. Senate Finance Committee for charging $84,000 for a 12 week course of a new drug to treat hepatitis C. Gilead sells the exact same course for $900 in poor countries like Egypt and India. Read More

Coca-Cola, the world's largest beverage producer, has been ordered to shut down its bottling plant in Varanasi, India following local complaints that the company was drawing excessive amounts of groundwater. After an investigation, government authorities ruled that the company had violated its operating license. Read More

Three major pharmaceutical companies - AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer - have recently delayed or canceled clinical trials for testing tuberculosis (TB) drugs in India and South Africa. Activists say this is symbolic of a trend by Big Pharma to abandon research into diseases that affect poor people. Read More

Bayer, the German pharmaceutical giant, is in hot water after CEO Marijn Dekkers told a Financial Times conference that the company designed medicines "for western patients who can afford it" not for the "Indian market." The company has been critical of the Indian governments efforts to make cheap generic drugs available locally. Read More

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has been accused of bribing doctors in China in order to boost sales. Chinese government officials say they have uncovered evidence of a bribery scheme involving 700 travel agencies who were used to funnel as much as three billion yuan ($480 million) in payments. Read More

Monsanto has refused to testify at a major government hearing about the development and sale of seeds in Puerto Rico. At stake is the research that the company conducts into genetic engineering on the island that critics say threaten the environment and can cause serious human health problems. Read More

Myriad Genetics has lost its right to be the exclusive U.S. commercial provider of genetic screening tests for breast cancer or ovarian cancer. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which sued the company, claimed that the patent would limit scientific research as well as health care options for women. Read More