instruction:
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.
question:
Paragraph: The story does not talk about costs, which was disappointing. The costs of intensive medical therapy can easily be identified. Using an online pharmacy we calculated the costs to be about $1,500 to $2,000 annually for medical therapy, using generic drugs. Using the Health Care Blue Book, we found the average cost of coronary artery bypass sugery and hospitalization to be about $62,000. We think that this is important information for readers that should have been included. The quantification here was presented in such a way to make it clear to readers that there was no significant benefit found to surgical intervention, which is a fair conclusion to draw from the study. The story says, “In the Stich study, 41% of patients assigned to treatment with drugs alone died during the follow-up period, which averaged five years. That compared with a mortality rate of 36% among patients who received bypass surgery plus medication. Although the relative reduction in risk of death was 14%, the result didn’t meet tests for statistical significance, meaning it could have resulted from chance alone.” That’s a great way to describe the lack of statistical significance. It would have been even more powerful to show readers the actual number of patients who died in each group. The story provides great information about the study itself and about the overall state of the evidence supporting heart surgery. “How best to treat these patients has been fraught with uncertainty,” is one of the more notable phrases from the story. It also says, “Many patients aren’t evaluated for heart surgery to treat diseased arteries because they don’t suffer classic chest pain or because doctors worry that hearts weakened by heart failure won’t benefit from the procedure. Other doctors recommend immediate bypass surgery despite a lack of vigorous studies to support that strategy.” The story does not engage in disease-mongering and takes a very careful approach to describing the types of patients who would be affected by this study’s results. We also like the way they provided snapshots of patients who were in both arms of the study — surgery and non-surgery — at the end of the story, making it clear, as the study did, that both routes can be equally successful. The story brings in some strong independent voices who help make sense of this complicated study: James Fang, a cardiologist at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study, Raymond Gibbons, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic, and Clyde Yancy, chief of cardiology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Rarely do you see a story that spends as much time with independent experts as it does with the authors of the study. The story does a great job showing how the standard interventions for heart disease stacked up against each other in this study. We wish that some mention had been made of diet and exercise and that at least a sentence had been included about whether there might be differences in outcomes seen as a result of different medication patterns. The story doesn’t make it clear what exactly the patients were taking. The story makes it clear that the range of treatments studied by the authors are widely available. The story makes it clear that there is a great need for more evidence in this field and that this study will be surprising to many clinicians because of a long-held assumption that surgery is the superior option. tudies published in the early 1990s supported the view that bypass surgery provided a better long term outcome. The story does not rely on a news release. Claim: More Options Before Bypass Surgery, Study Finds
answer:
The piece gave readers some powerful information to help them sort through the range of factors that should be considered for any medical intervention. The only weakness our reviewers found with the story is the lack of comment about cost. Too often stories present medical options as false choices of best versus worst. They don’t take into consideration the very real differences between patients’ medical histories, diagnoses and expectations. This story should be applauded for giving readers a clear understanding of the complexities of shared decision-making between providers and patients. As noted by one of the experts quoted in the story, “You don’t have a good therapy and a bad therapy, you have a choice.” This is a message that the story gets across very well and is an important one for readers.


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Paragraph: The mosquito-borne viral infection has spread across the country, with 61 out of 64 districts reporting dengue cases by late Tuesday. The government has confirmed 15,369 dengue cases since Jan. 1. Of those, 9,683 patients were diagnosed between July 1 and July 30. As of Tuesday, about 4,400 patients, including many children, were undergoing hospital treatment. There have been 14 deaths. Officials from Dhaka, the overcrowded capital and the epicenter of the outbreak, have struggled to contain it, drawing criticism and spreading panic among some residents. Dengue is found in tropical areas around the world and is spread by a type of mosquito that mainly lives in urban areas. The virus causes severe flu-like symptoms, and while there is no specific treatment for the illness, medical care to maintain a person’s fluid levels is seen as critical. There are fears that the situation in the countryside will worsen as many residents of the city travel to villages to celebrate Eid-ul-Adha next month. Infected humans can serve as a source of the virus for uninfected mosquitoes. Ayesha Akhter, assistant director at the Directorate General of Health Services under the Ministry of Health, said an outbreak of dengue has accompanied every monsoon since 2000, but this year’s situation is the worst. A DGHS study identified a six-fold increase in the Aedes aegypti mosquito population in four months in Dhaka as the primary cause of the larger-than-average outbreak. Earlier this month, the World Health Organization said the dengue situation in Bangladesh was “alarming but not out of control.” Other countries in Asia are also facing a surge in dengue cases this year, including Thailand, where 53,699 cases and 65 deaths were reported as of July 23. Nevertheless, with dengue cases soaring in recent weeks, Dhaka hospitals have been running out of room and manpower to treat new patients. Prof. Abul Kalam Azad, director general of DGHS, said they had asked the hospitals to increase beds for dengue patients and to open dengue wards. The government also halved the charges for diagnosing dengue and directed public and private hospitals, clinics and diagnostic centers to do the same. Dhaka Medical College Hospital, the largest hospital in the country, opened a special ward for dengue patients, said A.K.M. Nasir Uddin, its director general. Prof. Uttam Kumar Barua, director of Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College and Hospital, another major public hospital in Dhaka, said they were relying on senior medical students to assist doctors in the face of so many patients. “We don’t have manpower, logistic support and technicians as much as needed. That’s why we are having too much pressure. We have three times more patients than our bed capacity,” Barua said. He said they were admitting every dengue patient who entered the hospital but could not provide beds or even seats for everyone, adding that many had been asked to wait in hospital corridors and verandas. Champa Begum took her 8-month-old to Shaheed hospital on Wednesday. “I have other kids. I go to work leaving this one to another child. I have no way but to work,” she said. “I can’t take care of this child properly. This child is laid down anywhere. My home is above dirty water. That how this one was bitten and got dengue.” On Tuesday, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina called for concerted efforts to fight the illness. “The government is working to tackle dengue,” she told an emergency meeting of her ruling Awami League party via teleconference from London, where she was on an official visit. “I urge everyone to keep their houses and surrounding areas clean. That will save us from the disease,” she said. The country’s opposition parties and urban planning experts blamed the central and local government’s lack of preparedness for the rise in dengue cases. People have taken to Facebook to vent their anger about city authorities’ failure to control dengue-carrying mosquitoes. Claim: Bangladesh grapples with country’s worst dengue outbreak.
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Bangladesh is facing its worst-ever dengue fever outbreak as hospitals are flooded with patients, putting a severe strain on the country’s already overwhelmed medical system.


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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.