TASK DEFINITION: Generate an explanation for the given claim using the provided supporting material from the paragraph. Please consider the following points while generating an output. 1) The claim will always have supporting proof in the paragraph, and the paragraph will have a clear point of view supporting the claim. 2) There can be instances where direct correlation to the claim is not available. Make use of the sentences in the paragraph to provide a corresponding output supporting the claim. 3) The explanation should be at least one and at most twelve sentences long.
PROBLEM: Paragraph: Moncef Slaoui, a former GlaxoSmithKline executive, will lead “Operation Warp Speed,” Trump’s push to accelerate the vaccine development process for COVID-19, according to an administration official. Slaoui is to serve in a volunteer capacity, and will be assisted by Army Gen. Gustave Perna, the commander of United States Army Materiel Command. The move comes as the president and White House aides hope to produce vaccines for the coronavirus faster than what many scientists believe is realistic. The administration is aiming to have 300 million doses to distribute to Americans by the end of the year, believing a reliable vaccine is the only way to promote an economic rebound. “Operation Warp Speed” is operating largely independently of the existing White House coronavirus task force, which is also shifting its focus toward vaccine development. The initiative is being promoted by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, and involves officials from the Defense Department and the Department of Health and Human Services. On Tuesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, said a vaccine would not be available by the beginning of the next academic year. “The idea of having treatments available or a vaccine to facilitate re-entry of students into the fall term would be something that would be a bit of a bridge too far,” he said, “even at the top speed we’re going.” Claim: Trump to name former pharma exec as vaccine czar.

SOLUTION: President Donald Trump is set to name a former pharmaceutical executive to lead his administration’s all-out effort to produce and distribute a coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: Five hours later, Soni was dead, one of more than 100 children to die this month from Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES), or ‘brain fever’, in one district of eastern Bihar state. “I still see her in my dreams,” said Sahana Khatun, Soni’s mother. “I can’t accept she is gone.”  The deaths were preventable, doctors say, if poor families had access to good food, clean water and better medical care in Muzaffarpur district, 80 km (50 miles) from the state capital Patna. The epidemic has sparked a debate over growing inequality in India and focused attention on a free healthcare scheme for the poor - known as “Modicare” after Prime Minister Narendra Modi - eight months after it was launched. The precise causes of AES, which killed more than 350 in Bihar in 2014, are not known, though a majority of medical professionals say it is linked to a ferocious heat-wave that has gripped Bihar for the last month. Some studies have blamed toxins in lychees, a fruit grown in abundance in orchards around Muzaffarpur, though many families told Reuters their children had not eaten them in recent weeks. The victims come from poor families who often suffer from malnutrition and dehydration, doctors in Muzaffarpur said. If caught quickly, AES patients can often recover with simple rehydration treatment, doctors said, but delayed care can lead to convulsions and eventual death. “It is a preventable disease,” said Dr. Chaitanya Kumar at the district’s Kejriwal Maternity Hospital, one of two treating young AES patients. “Glucose and providing meals to some of the poorest districts – these are not expensive things.”   India has world-class hospitals in major cities like New Delhi and Mumbai, but rural facilities like those in Muzaffarpur are overstretched, doctors say. The 600-bed Sri Krishna Medical College Hospital in Muzaffarpur has more than 900 patients, a third of them children with AES. Ninety-three AES patients have died at the facility since the outbreak began. Stray goats roam over rubbish and rubble on the hospital grounds. The building has frequent power cuts and the stench of urine lingers in the hallways. The hospital evicted a group of sick inmates from a ward to accommodate the surge in AES patients, but at times there are still two or three children assigned to one bed. “It is incredibly difficult to be a doctor in a place like this,” said Ravikant Singh, a volunteer doctor from Mumbai who was giving rehydration solutions to patients at the hospital. Other doctors said they felt powerless. “I can’t do anything. It is the social conditions that have to change,” said Rajkumar Goenka, secretary of the trust that operates Kejriwal hospital. “The government – state and national – has to do something,” he added. Nearly half of all children in Muzaffarpur are underweight, and a similar number are stunted, or too short for their age, according to government data. In Marwan, a village of thatched huts where many residents belong to one of the lowest rungs in India’s caste system, some children have swollen stomachs – a common sign of malnutrition. Residents interviewed by Reuters said they were unaware of Ayushman Bharat, the program known as ‘Modicare’ launched in 2018 to give India’s poorest free access to private healthcare. Nand Lal Mandhji, 61, whose four-year-old granddaughter died from AES, said the family was given a flyer about the scheme during a hospital visit in May. The family is illiterate and the program was not explained to them, he said. “They gave us something but we didn’t understand what it meant,” he said, clutching the flyer with Modi’s image. Eight families in Marwan with sick relatives said they had never heard of Modicare, and did not receive warnings from authorities about the dangers of AES. “No one comes here. Not politicians, health workers, no one,” said Sahana Khatun, Soni’s mother. ($1 = 69.6350 Indian rupees) Claim: 'Brain fever' blamed for India child deaths preventable: doctors.

SOLUTION: Five-year-old Soni Khatun was playing in the midday sun last week when she began to vomit and lose feeling in her hands. Her mother, a poor laborer living in rural India, borrowed money to take her to hospital.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: There’s no mention of costs. The manufacturer, Gilead Sciences, has been charging $94,500 for a 12-week regimen of this combination therapy, marketed to adults as Harvoni. While government and private payers have balked at the cost, the company says the price tag is justified by its effectiveness in eradicating the virus, which will save the cost of treating serious liver disease down the road. The news release states that 99 percent, or 89 out of 90, children treated with the ledipasvir/sofosbuvir combination had undetectable levels of hepatitis C virus 12 weeks after treatment. We do caution that sustained virological response (SVR) and the reduction in viral load, which is what this study measured, may or may not reflect outcomes that people care about. As discussed in another review on a different hepatitis C drug announcement, “Patients care most about conditions that affect them and not how many virus particles are in their blood.” The news release does an adequate job, stating that the combination therapy “was well-tolerated, and no patients experienced a serious adverse event considered related to the study drug.” It adds: “The most common side effects reported in 10% or more of patients were headache, fever, abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting, cough, fatigue, sore throat and nausea.” But one important caveat wasn’t mentioned: Often negative effects aren’t apparent until after a drug goes on the market and is used by a large and diverse population of patients. For example, if the drug resulted in a fatal complication in 2 out of 100 children, this small study could easily have missed that. It’s risky to call a drug “safe” until it’s been used in a very large number of patients. This is particularly true when drugs are fast-tracked for approval by the FDA, as Harvoni’s use in children is expected to be. As HealthNewsReview.org reported in January, Harvoni is among the new generation of hepatitis C drugs that are generating serious adverse effects that warrant further scrutiny. Hence, there could be unknown risks in extending this therapy to kids. The news release gives information about the length of the study, the number of participants, and the study population. It states that most were male, white, and had no prior treatment, and had been infected by their mothers at birth. And it states that this is an open-label study, so no standard treatment or placebo was used as a comparison. The release doesn’t engage in disease mongering. It notes the prevalence of hepatitis C among children, which “varies from 0.05%-0.36% in the United States and Europe and up to 1.8%-5.8% in some developing countries.” It would have been even better with specific numbers. The news release says research funding came from the manufacturer, Gilead Sciences, and the National Institutes of Health, and the study authors own stock in Merck. Kudos for transparency. The news release offers a comparison with the current standard of care: “While direct-acting antivirals have been used to treat and cure adult patients with HCV,4-7 until now children have been mainly treated for 24 to 48 weeks with pegylated interferon plus ribavirin (RBV), an older treatment which causes severe side effects.” The news release doesn’t explain what hurdles, such as FDA approval, are required to make this therapy available to children. The news release explains the significance of this study via quotes from two researchers: “Direct-acting antivirals have transformed the treatment of adults with chronic HCV (hepatitis C), however, studies of these new therapies in children are required,” said Dr. Karen Murray, University of Washington School of Medicine and Seattle Children’s, Seattle, United States, and lead author of the study. “These data establish the use of the oral direct-acting antivirals as an important treatment option in HCV-infected children aged six to 11 years old.” “This study is a breakthrough for the management of children aged six to 11 years old with Hepatitis C, demonstrating that the new DAA regimen is highly efficacious and, more importantly, safe in this group of HCV-infected children”, said Prof. Frank Tacke, University Hospital Aachen, Germany, and EASL Governing Board Member. The news release uses two words — “cure” and “breakthrough” — that we advise journalists to avoid because they are imprecise and tend to sensationalize. Claim: Investigational dose of oral interferon-free treatment can cure hepatitis C in children

SOLUTION:
This news release from the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) heralding the safety and efficacy of a combination drug therapy for children with hepatitis C does a good job in several areas. It explains the scope of benefits and harms, how the study was conducted, and how the therapy could improve treatment options for kids with this contagious disease. On the other hand, the news release overlooks discussion of the enormous cost of this therapy and of potential adverse effects that may emerge when the therapy is used in a large population. We also disagree with its use of the sensational words “cure” and “breakthrough.” Editor’s note: This review contains an update under the benefits criteria that adds a caution about not equating reduced viral load with a cure. One estimate puts the incidence of chronic hepatitis C infection in U.S. children at between 23,000 and 46,000. Pediatric hepatitis C is usually contracted at birth from mothers with a history of IV drug abuse. More than one-third of infected kids eventually develop a life threatening long-term liver disease. Approving more effective and safer treatment options for these kids — options that are already available to adults — would be an important benefit.