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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.
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Paragraph: The Alaska Section of Epidemiology said in an update this week that it has requested help with response efforts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, KTVA-TV reported Wednesday. The number of cases is the highest reported in the state since at least the 1970s, said Susan Jones, a program manager with the state Division of Public Health. “It actually can be before that but that’s as far back as we have saved data,” Jones said. Out of the 75 cases, 64 occurred in Anchorage and 66 were men, according to the state. Of the nine women, two were pregnant at the time of diagnosis. The ages of people infected ranged from 18 to 76, with 20 cases recorded in the 25 to 29 age group. Health officials also found a probable case of congenital syphilis in an infant born in March whose mother had been diagnosed last year. Symptoms of the sexually transmitted infection in its early stages include genital sores, skin rash, swollen lymph nodes, and fever, according to the CDC. The disease in the tertiary stage can damage internal organs and result in death. According to the CDC, most people with untreated syphilis do not develop symptoms of the last stage, but tertiary syphilis could develop decades after infection. “It’s easy to acquire syphilis by having sex with somebody with infection, it’s easy to have the disease and not be aware of it, and it’s also easy to treat if we catch it early,” Jones said. Syphilis can be treated with an antibiotic injection. ___ Information from: KTVA-TV, http://www.ktva.com Claim: Alaska hit with largest syphilis outbreak in 40 years.
answer:
Alaska health officials have recorded 75 cases of syphilis in the state this year, marking the largest outbreak of the infectious disease in at least four decades.


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Paragraph: South Korea’s agriculture ministry said North Korea reported to the World Organization for Animal Health that 77 of the 99 pigs at a farm in Jagang province died of the disease and another 22 pigs were culled. The outbreak in North Korea comes after the disease in past months ravaged farms in China, where more than a million pigs have been reportedly culled, and also spread to Vietnam, Cambodia and Mongolia. The disease is harmless to humans but for pigs is fatal and highly contagious, and there is no known cure or vaccine. North Korea’s official Rodong Sinmun newspaper on Friday published three different articles detailing the spread of the African swine fever across Asia, but none of them mentioned that the disease has reached the North. Oh Soon-min, director of quarantine policies at South Korea’s agriculture ministry, said quarantine measures and blood tests will be stepped up in some 350 pig farms near the inter-Korean border. Fences and traps will also be installed near the farms to prevent the pigs from contacting wild boars that roam in and out of North Korea. “While North Korea’s Jagang province, where the outbreak of the African swine fever was confirmed, is near the border between North Korea and China, we do believe this is a serious situation as there is a possibility that the disease can spread toward the South,” Oh said. He said the South Korean government believes the North raises about 2.6 million pigs in 14 government-run or cooperative farms. The South hopes to discuss the issue with North Korea at an inter-Korean liaison office and find ways to help the North fight the spread, said Eugene Lee, a spokeswoman from Seoul’s Unification Ministry, which deals with inter-Korean affairs. The outbreak comes as the North has significantly slowed its engagement with South Korea following the collapse of a February summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump. Lee said the South had told the North “several times” that it could help in case of African swine fever outbreak, but did not confirm how North Korean officials responded. Claim: Seoul: North Korea confirms African swine fever outbreak.
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South Korea said Friday that it is scrambling to prevent the spread of the highly contagious African swine fever on its pig industry after North Korea confirmed an outbreak at a farm near its border with China.


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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.
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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.