Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.

Ex Input:
An estimate of the treatment cost, $13/month was obtained from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation The absolute benefit, 41% of those using the treatment avoided complications, is compared with the 16% of those not using the salt water treatment. The treatment was noted as having potentially limited benefit because the prospect of adding an additional 30 minutes of treatment to an already extensive treatment regimen could be a burden. No mention was made of the small (5%) number of patients using the treatment that experienced adverse events. The article describing the two studies failed to detail the nature of the studies. They were two randomized clinical trials. The article explains that cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease and a rare disorder. The reporter contacted a clinician from a cystic fibrosis center that did not appear to have ties to either study. She also included commentsfrom an editorial on the two studies. The advantage of this treatment is that it may reduce the incidence of some serious complications of the disease. The article is clear that this treatment does not cure cystic fibrosis and is used in addition to other therapies, not instead of them. The treatment is available at the centers actually involved in the studies; comments from a third clinician directing treatment of individuals with cystic fibrosis but not involved in the studies indicates that use of this treatment has already been picked up by other groups specializing in cystic fibrosis care. While this could suggest that other groups specializing in cystic fibrosis care might also be offering this treatment, the actual availability is not clear. This article reports on the use of a novel adjunct treatment in the management of cystic fibrosis

Ex Output:
Saltwater therapy helps ease cystic fibrosis


Ex Input:
Health workers were desperate to persuade him to get vaccinated for Ebola after a friend fell ill with the lethal and highly contagious disease. But within days, Nduhi was dead. His widow and their four young children were given his positive Ebola test result and a chilling warning from a team of health workers: “If you don’t accept vaccination, you can prepare to die.” Deep distrust — along with political instability and deadly violence — has severely undermined efforts by public health authorities in Congo to curb the outbreak by tracing and vaccinating those who may have come into contact with infected people. Health experts agree the experimental Ebola vaccine has saved multitudes in Congo. But after nearly a year and some 171,000 doses given, the epidemic shows few signs of waning. The virus has killed more than 1,700 people and has now arrived in the region’s largest city, Goma. The World Health Organization last week declared the outbreak a global health emergency. During the 2014-16 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, which left more than 11,300 people dead, health workers could only dream of a vaccine with a 97.5 percent effectiveness rate that could improve the odds of survival even in those already infected. “We have it now and it’s not the miracle we wanted it to be,” said Dr. Joanne Liu, president of Doctors Without Borders. “The fact that we’ve used so much vaccine, and the epidemic hasn’t stopped, that shows us that contact tracing is not great.” WHO says as many as 90 percent of those eligible for vaccination have accepted it, but that figure only includes those who gave contact tracers enough information to be included on a list. The success rate excludes those who distrusted health workers and fled, or those who couldn’t be found in the first place. Health workers have been using what is known as a ring vaccination strategy: The vaccine is first given to those who were in close contact with a sick person. Then a second so-called ring is created by giving the vaccine to those who were in contact with those people. Because of the difficulties in making that strategy work, some people didn’t get vaccinated until they had already been infected with the virus, and they developed Ebola anyway. That increased doubts about the vaccine in communities where the public health campaigns led by outsiders already were viewed with suspicion and hostility. “The rumors were if you got vaccinated you would die,” said Liboke Kakule Muhingi, a 43-year-old farmer in Mangina, where the epidemic began last August. His mother was among the first to die. Then, one by one, six of his sisters who had cared for their ailing mother were killed by Ebola. Kakule accepted the vaccine and made sure his wife and eight children got it, too. “If I hadn’t, we’d all be dead,” he said. In some cases, health teams have been unable to reach certain areas because of violence or rebel activity. Earlier this month, the head of the Congolese health ministry’s response efforts in Beni was at one point unable to return from a field visit while the military battled ADF rebels, who are linked to the Islamic State. More often, though, contact lists have fallen apart simply because people have deliberately evaded health workers or did not understand they shouldn’t travel after being exposed. A pastor who became the first confirmed case in Goma had apparently put down fake names at health checkpoints to avoid detection. He had been sickened in the town of Butembo and then took a bus while ill. WHO and the Congolese health ministry have now switched tactics and are offering the vaccine to anyone who wants it. With Ebola’s arrival in Goma, a city of more than 2 million people, some wonder whether there will be enough of the vaccine if the outbreak continues. The vaccine’s manufacturer, Merck, said it has 245,000 1-millileter doses on hand and that could rise to 900,000 over the next 18 months. The dose in Congo also has been reduced to 0.5 mL, effectively doubling the supply. “Whether or not the available doses are sufficient to fulfill the demands depends on the evolution of the outbreak, the access to the communities and the successful expansion of the production of additional doses by Merck in early 2020,” WHO said. There is a second experimental vaccine, produced by Johnson & Johnson, but health officials in Congo have said it will not be used because it needs further testing and would cause too much confusion. It requires two doses given one month apart. It’s unclear how long the Merck vaccine will protect people. Scientists know from early studies that it lasts for at least a year, but the epidemic is approaching that limit. The only study to report longer vaccine durability tracked only a small number of healthy volunteers in Geneva for two years. The new strategy of giving shots to anyone who wants them involves setting up “pop-up” sites in the neighborhoods most affected. Last week a vaccination team headed to the neighborhood in Beni where Nduhi’s wife had stayed after he died. Outside the mud-brick home where his children still lived, a pickup truck full of plastic tables and chairs pulled over. Soon a tent was set up, and vaccination teams donned eye protection and yellow surgical gowns. Neighborhood children climbed the trees to watch. Baraka Kathembo Makasi, a 22-year-old motorbike taxi driver, brought his wife and two children with him. “At first I refused,” he said, “but I started seeing people die and decided to go.” ___ Associated Press writers Al-Hadji Kudra Maliro in Beni, Congo; Lauran Neergaard in Washington; Maria Cheng in London; and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.

Ex Output:
Ebola vaccine hampered by deep distrust in eastern Congo.


Ex Input:
That’s the question a team of students and professors at the University of Alabama is trying to determine. In many parts of the Black Belt, homeowners are resorting to “straight pipe” systems to dispose of wastewater and sewage, rather than sewers or septic tanks because of a type of thick, clay soil and widespread poverty across isolated areas. In those instances, untreated wastewater and sewage are simply flushed out of a plain PVC pipe from the house into the woods, or even the backyard, raising concerns about tropical diseases like hookworm and other public health issues. Al.com reports University of Alabama graduate students and professors, backed by a federal grant, are joining efforts to determine just how widespread these practices are and what can be done about them. The UA team received a $15,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s “People, Prosperity and the Planet,” program, a competition for students proposing a yearlong project to address an environmental or public health issue. The students will use computer models to map how widespread sanitation issues are in Alabama’s Black Belt, a region plagued with sewage and wastewater problems and reports of tropical diseases like hookworm that are associated with poor sanitation. The student project will go hand-in-hand with efforts by university researchers and state and federal agencies. University of Alabama civil engineering professor Mark Elliott, a faculty adviser for the project, said the Black Belt is being hampered by a combination of poor soil conditions where traditional septic systems don’t work, high levels of poverty, and people living in relatively isolated areas where connecting to municipal sewer lines is not an option. Elliott said the “shrink-swell clays” that make up about half the soil in the Black Belt don’t allow water to flow through, and make most septic systems “almost impossible to use.” “So in that situation, understandably, many people, especially poor people, have decided not to waste their money on a system that they know is going to fail,” Elliott said. One survey conducted by UA and the Alabama Department of Public Health found that 60 percent of homes surveyed in Wilcox County that weren’t connected to municipal sewer lines had a visible straight pipe. Though disposing of waste through a straight pipe is illegal, most of the people who resort to such methods cannot afford to install a septic system, and in large areas in the Black Belt, most septic systems would not work anyway. The Alabama Department of Public Health has decreased emphasis on fining offenders and instead is focused on finding workable solutions. In recent months, political figures including Cory Booker, Al Gore and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have attempted to draw attention to the area’s struggles, but it’s still not clear just how widespread those problems are. “There’s been publicity around this issue, particularly in Lowndes County, for a long time but the scope of the problem was never really defined,” Elliott said. “It was presented as a series of anecdotes, and that made it hard to define how much it would cost to fix the problem and what solutions would be appropriate.” The students, led by UA graduate student Aaron Blackwell, plan to construct a computer model to estimate how likely a home is to have a straight pipe, based on factors such as soil conditions, existing infrastructure, population density and property values. The students will apply their model to five of the 17 counties traditionally included in Alabama’s Black Belt: Lowndes, Wilcox, Perry, Dallas and Hale Counties. UA’s team is in the first phase of the program, and will attend the TechConnect World Innovation Conference and Expo in Boston in June to showcase its research. The team can then apply for a second-phase grant for funding up to $100,000 to further the project design. Other members of the team include Joseph Weber, UA professor of geological sciences, Sagy Cohen, UA associate professor of geological sciences, and Rebecca Greenberg, a UA graduate student studying geology. The students’ project will be part of a larger collaborative effort involving a group of state and federal health and environmental agencies, universities and elected officials to find solutions to the problems. That group, dubbed the Alabama Rural Water and Wastewater Management Consortium, continues to meet to discuss which potential solutions might work best and how to pay for those solutions. Elliott said one idea that is frequently discussed among the group is identifying clusters of houses that could be grouped together to use smaller-scale treatment systems that that would be more effective than a typical septic system but less expensive than expanding municipal sewer lines to remote areas.

Ex Output:

University of Alabama team look at untreated sewage issue.