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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Question: Paragraph: The research was released Monday as the state started its first statewide campaign to prevent the disease. The most recent case came out of Hilo, where a resident contracted the disease in late November. Department of Health officials suspect the Big Island patient accidentally ingested an infected slug while drinking from a garden house. People contract the disease by ingesting food contaminated with snails or slugs that carry parasitic larvae from rat droppings. The state’s $300,000 campaign will include a series of television and radio announcements urging people to wash fruits and vegetables before eating them to avoid the potentially debilitating disease, which affects the brain and spinal cord. The Legislature earlier this year granted the Health Department $1 million over the next two years to control the spread of rat lungworm. There were 18 laboratory-confirmed cases in Hawaii this year. The Big Island has seen the most cases at 11, followed by Maui at six. Sue Jarvi, a professor at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, said the recent study shed light on how common the disease is in rats. Jarvi said rats near Hilo Harbor and Hilo International Airport are especially worrisome because some end up getting transported to the mainland and other countries, potentially exporting rat lungworm. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UH-Hilo and researchers in Thailand are all reviewing parasites that were collected, Jarvi said. “The risk of rat lungworm disease is present on all islands and there are basic steps we can take each day to reduce this risk and help prevent infection,” said Keith Kawaoka, the department’s deputy director of environmental health. “Knowledge is the best defense we can provide people with to collectively protect our communities from rat lungworm disease in Hawaii.” Claim: Hawaii launches campaign to prevent spread of rat lungworm.

Answer: Almost 94 percent of rats in the Hilo region are infected with the parasite that causes rat lungworm disease, a recent study on the meningitis-like disease showed.


Question: Paragraph: The lawsuit seeking class-action status was filed in U.S. District Court on behalf of a dozen children against Gov. Jim Justice, the state Department of Health and Human Resources and other state officials. The 105-page complaint describes stories of neglect and harm done to foster children while under the department’s care. Many were in inadequate and dangerous placements, left without necessary services or forced to languish in foster care for years, including a 17-year-old suicidal boy who sleeps in a locked cell at a juvenile detention center. Filed by a Charleston law firm and nonprofit advocacy groups A Better Childhood and Disability Rights West Virginia, the lawsuit said the state’s child welfare system has “significant administrative problems that hinder its ability to operate effectively.” “For years, the state has ignored repeated recommendations about how to fix the damaging West Virginia foster care system,” Marcia Robinson Lowry, executive director of A Better Childhood, said in a statement. “Children are being sent to institutions, placed in foster homes without any services, and abandoned by the state.” New York-based A Better Childhood has filed similar lawsuits in several states. DHHR Secretary Bill Crouch said changes were made to the child welfare system starting in 2013 and efforts have increased every year since. Crouch said the lawsuit will cost the state millions of dollars “and was filed by a company that has never contacted us to ask the question: ‘What are you doing to fix these problems?’ We welcome the opportunity to make our case in court.” The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Earlier this year, West Virginia agreed to expand mental health services for children after a federal investigation found the state unnecessarily institutionalized kids with emotional or behavioral disorders. In the case of the 17-year-old boy, the lawsuit said he was physically abused by his family and has been under DHHR care since 2012. He lived in group homes and residential care centers before being sent to a juvenile detention center, where he sleeps on a mattress on a cement floor in a locked cell. He suffers from depression, has attempted suicide several times and will be homeless when he ages out of the system within the year, the lawsuit said. In September, the DHHR told lawmakers that 651 foster care children, mostly teen boys, have run away from group care settings or schools in less than a year. “Not only are we failing to provide federally mandated care, but we are also failing to prepare these children for what lies ahead and instead condemning many of them to a life of abuse and homelessness once they age out of foster care,” plaintiffs’ attorney Richard Walters said. The DHHR’s foster care ranks have swelled to about 6,900 children — an increase of more than 60% from the same time in 2015 — as the state grapples with the opioid addiction epidemic. West Virginia has by far the highest rate of drug overdose deaths in the nation. The lawsuit said three siblings ages 2, 3 and 4 were placed under DHHR care because of drug-addicted parents, but the children have moved from one foster home to another “due to DHHR’s inability to appropriately develop case plans and to follow department procedures.” West Virginia can no longer use the opioid epidemic as an excuse, the lawsuit said. “The foster care crisis in West Virginia is not an issue that just arose in the last 4-5 years, it’s a systemic problem that has festered in the state for almost 20 years,” said Jeremiah Underhill, legal director of Disability Rights West Virginia. The lawsuit also says the state failed to maintain an adequate number of appropriate foster homes and resorts to quick placements among relatives without vetting or monitoring to ensure children’s safety. The reliance upon kinship caregivers has increased more than 30 percentage points over the past five years. State lawmakers have limited placement of a child in an out-of-state facility unless it’s closer to the child’s family or the child has a health issue that cannot be addressed by an in-state facility. Claim: Federal lawsuit targets West Virginia foster care system.

Answer: The overwhelmed foster care system in opioid-ravaged West Virginia has failed to protect children, according to a federal lawsuit filed Monday.


Question: Paragraph: Feinberg has been instructed to meet with lawyers for Bayer and plaintiffs within the next 14 days, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco said during a court hearing on Wednesday. Chhabria, who oversees some 900 federal Roundup lawsuits, on April 11 ordered the parties to start confidential mediation. He appointed Feinberg after the parties failed to agree on a mediator. Feinberg is well known for having facilitated dispute resolutions in high-stakes litigations in the past. He led mediation talks over the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, Volkswagen’s diesel emissions scandal and General Motors ignition switch litigation. Chhabria on Wednesday also scheduled the next federal Roundup trial for February 2020. The case would mark the second bellwether, or test trial, to help determine the range of damages and define settlement options for federal cases. The judge also wants to prepare some 20 cases currently pending before him for trial and send them to other courts across the country. More than 13,400 plaintiffs nationwide allege Roundup caused non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and that the company failed to warn about that risk. The majority of lawsuits are pending in state courts across the country. Bayer, which acquired Roundup maker Monsanto in a $63 billion deal last year, denies the allegations, saying studies and regulators have deemed glyphosate and Roundup safe for human use. The company in the past said it would comply with Chhabria’s mediation order in good faith, while believing strongly in the “extensive body of reliable science supporting the safety of Roundup.”  Bayer has also said it would defend itself in all cases and await the appeals process underway for the three cases that have gone to trial and resulted in jury verdicts against it. A California jury on May 13 awarded $2 billion to a couple alleging Roundup caused their cancer. In March, a federal jury in San Francisco awarded $80 million to a California man after finding Roundup caused his cancer. That decision came after another California jury in August 2018 awarded $289 million to a groundskeeper in the first U.S. Roundup trial. That award was later reduced to $78 million. Claim: U.S. judge appoints Ken Feinberg mediator for Bayer Roundup settlement talks.

Answer:
A U.S. judge on Wednesday appointed prominent attorney Kenneth Feinberg as mediator for court-mandated settlement talks in the federal litigation over allegations that Bayer AG’s glyphosate-based Roundup weed killer caused cancer.