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.

Q: Ebola has left those living in the country’s east weary and fearful, and, just as they were preparing to declare an end to the outbreak, a new case popped up. Now, they will now have to manage both threats at once. The new virus has overwhelmed some of the world’s best hospital systems in Europe and ripped through communities in New York. In Congo, it could spread unchecked in a country that has endured decades of conflict, where corruption has left the the population largely impoverished despite mineral wealth, and where mistrust of authority is so entrenched that health workers have been killed during the Ebola outbreak. It’s also unclear how forthcoming international support will be at a time when the whole world is battling the coronavirus. “It all feels like one big storm,” said Martine Milonde, a Congolese community mobilizer who works with the aid group World Vision in Beni, which has been the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak. “Truly, this is a crisis within a crisis within a crisis. The community suffers from insecurity, and suffered under Ebola, and now may have to face COVID-19.” In early March, an Ebola patient whom many hoped would be the last was discharged, and the outbreak was supposed to be officially declared over Sunday. But the World Health Organization on Friday announced a new case in Beni. The outbreak has claimed more than 2,260 lives since August 2018 — the second largest the world has ever seen, after the 2014-2016 outbreak in West Africa. Still, there is some hope: Many of the tools used to fight Ebola — hand-washing and social distancing chief among them — are also key to combating the coronavirus. In Beni, which has reported two cases of the new coronavirus, “the communities here hold onto some hope that they are going to overcome this pandemic the way they had been working to overcome Ebola,” said Milonde. “They are counting on the caution, vigilance and hygiene practices that they have been performing to save their families.”  Community advocates in Beni — who walk around with megaphones to talk about Ebola — have started to include warnings about the coronavirus. Messages explaining COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and where to go if sick are being spread on radio stations, through text message blasts and by religious leaders. Schools, churches and mosques are already armed with hand-washing kits. Beni’s mayor, Nyonyi Bwanakawa, says many of the measures will be familiar — but the recommendations to stay home are more stringent than what is required for Ebola, and officials are prepared to take “dramatic measures” if people resist. Unlike Ebola, which kills about half of the people it infects, the new coronavirus causes mostly mild or moderate symptoms in about 80% of people. Spreading Ebola typically requires an exchange of bodily fluids, and people have often been infected when caring for loved ones or mourning in traditional funerals that involve close contact with the body. In contrast, the new coronavirus is far more contagious and mostly spread by people coughing or sneezing, including those with only mild flu-like symptoms. That means the task of controlling the virus’ spread in Congo will be massive: The government has only limited control in parts of the vast country, there are also some dense population centers with poor sanitation and infrastructure, and the country’s mineral-rich east is beset by violence from various armed groups. Dr. Michel Yao, program manager for emergency response at the WHO’s Africa office, said implementing robust testing and contact tracing will be key. But getting the community fully involved in fighting the disease might be even more important. That means not just speaking at communities, “but giving them responsibility and roles to play.” Initially, efforts to control Ebola were met with resistance, one of the major contributors to its spread. Amid the insecurity in the country’s east, superstitions arose, and some clinics to treat Ebola patients were attacked and health workers killed. The capital, Kinshasa, a tightly packed city of 14 million located on the country’s western border, remains another major worry, said Yao, who is based at WHO’s African headquarters in the neighboring Republic of Congo. “If it reaches this place, it would be a big disaster,” he said. “Africa is only partly ready,” said Yao. “If we stick to sporadic cases, this can be managed.” But many more developed countries have seen cases surge, and a sizable outbreak in Congo could easily overwhelm its hospital system. Advanced equipment to deal with severe respiratory illness, which the coronavirus can cause, is lacking: The Health Ministry says there are about 65 ventilators — all in Kinshasa — and 20 more on order for a country of more than 80 million people. There have been 215 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus in Congo, with 20 deaths, the ministry said Friday. And health workers will also need to find a way to continue to treat people infected with the many other diseases that regularly torment the population. Over the past year, for instance, a measles outbreak killed more than 6,000 people in Congo. In addition, because donor countries are themselves dealing with outbreaks, help from abroad could be less forthcoming. The key, Yao said, is training more people locally to care for the ill. The challenge will be rallying again after many months of trying to contain Ebola. “The job wasn’t yet finished, and we have to deal with another emergency,” Yao said. Katungo Methya, 53, who volunteers for the Red Cross in Beni, expressed a weariness many feel. “It’s so upsetting to have this second disease. We lost so many people through Ebola, a lot of deaths, now corona,” she said. “Everyone is really afraid.” ___ Petesch reported from Dakar, Senegal. AP medical writer Maria Cheng in London contributed from London.

A: Congo, weary from Ebola, must also battle the coronavirus.
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Q: “They are heroic, I think there is no other way to describe what they are doing at this moment,” said Howard Catton, a British nurse who is the ICN’s chief executive officer. Infection rates of 9% and 12-14% have been reported among health workers in Italy and Spain, respectively, and deaths among nurses there and in Iran and Indonesia, he said. “We have no doubt that the rate of infections is related in part to the lack of PPE - personal protective equipment,” he told Reuters at the ICN offices along Lake Geneva. “There is a global shortage and nurses obviously are at a higher risk given the people that they are caring for.”  The federation represents 130 national associations and more than 20 million registered nurses. The World Health Organization has called repeatedly for countries and manufacturers to step up production of masks, gloves, gowns and other equipment for vulnerable health workers amidst critical shortages. Nearly 700,000 people have been infected worldwide in the outbreak that began last December in China and has claimed more than 33,000 lives, according to the WHO. Catton said there had been problems with supply chains in hard-hit Italy and Spain, describing their health systems as “very close to being overwhelmed”. Nurses worldwide take samples from COVID-19 patients, give them medicines and oxygen, and help incubate those in serious condition. “They are working under intense pressure, often long hours, some working back-to-back shifts for days on end, even sleeping over in the hospital, the facility, in which they work.”  Some nurses have been forced to re-use their gear or make their own masks and gowns, he added. “Wearing personal protective equipment when it is available is not easy either...Simple things like going to the loo and eating are of course much more difficult,” he said. Nurses across Africa and South Asia could be at greater risk as the virus moves to poorer settings. “We are very concerned that those countries that have weaker, more fragile health care systems could very quickly become overwhelmed by this virus if it takes hold in their countries,” Catton said. Nurses in Zimbabwe, fearing for their own safety, have been on strike due to a lack of information and protective gear, he said.

A: Heroic nurses need full protection against coronavirus, association says.
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Q: The Sackler family owns Purdue Pharma, the privately held drug company that has made billions from OxyContin, and Sacklers hold most of the seats on the board. Members of the family have been accused in a case brought by the state of Massachusetts of deceiving patients and doctors about the drug’s risks as deaths mounted. And documents recently released in the case shine new light on former Purdue Pharma President Richard Sackler’s role in the aggressive marketing of the powerful opioid. As the allegations mount, family members who made their fortunes well before OxyContin even went on the market have sought to distance themselves from their relatives. At the same time, activists have called on institutions to cut ties with the Sacklers, staging protests at museums that have received millions in donations. “The Sackler name is becoming synonymous with the opioid epidemic, and it is damning for these institutions to have their name up,” said Nan Goldin, a photographer whose works have been displayed at Harvard’s Arthur M. Sackler Museum and at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has a Sackler Wing. Lost in the outrage: One of the most generous and best known of the Sacklers died in 1987, nearly a decade before OxyContin was released. Arthur M. Sackler made his money from medical research, medical advertising and trade publications. His younger brothers, Raymond and Mortimer, bought out his stake after he died. Arthur Sackler’s name is on a gallery at the Smithsonian, a wing of galleries at London’s Royal Academy of Arts and a museum at Beijing’s Peking University. The Sackler Wing at the Met, which houses the celebrated Temple of Dendur from ancient Egypt, was funded by all three brothers. Richard has likewise donated heavily to various institutions. After a federal investigation, Purdue Pharma and three executives — none of them Sacklers — pleaded guilty in 2007 and agreed to pay more than $600 million for misleading the public about the risks of OxyContin. The Stamford, Connecticut, company has also been hit with a multitude of lawsuits over its role in the opioid crisis that killed more than 47,000 people in 2017 alone. Arthur’s nephew, Richard Sackler, who became president of Purdue Pharma in 1999 and remains on the board, is at the center of the litigation. He and other current and former executives have been accused of hiding the dangers of the drug from doctors and patients, encouraging physicians to prescribe more of the highest doses and minimizing the abuse crisis as it was unfolding. “This is not too bad. It could have been far worse,” he wrote to Purdue Pharma executives in 2001 after a federal prosecutor reported that 59 people in one state had died from OxyContin, according to documents released this week in the Massachusetts case. At the launch party for OxyContin in 1996, Richard Sackler boasted the drug would bring a “blizzard of prescriptions that will bury the competition,” the documents say. Years later, they say, he sought to shift blame onto drug users themselves, recommending the company “hammer on the abusers in every way possible.” “Richard followed that strategy for the rest of his career: collect millions from selling addictive drugs, and blame the terrible consequences on the people who became addicted,” attorneys in Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s office wrote. “By their misconduct, the Sacklers have hammered Massachusetts families in every way possible. And the stigma they used as a weapon made the crisis worse.” A spokesman for Richard Sackler’s family referred questions about the lawsuit to the company. Purdue Pharma said in a statement that Massachusetts’ case — the first one brought by a state to personally name members of the Sackler family — is “littered with biased and inaccurate characterizations.” The company said it will “aggressively defend against these misleading allegations.” Arthur Sackler’s widow and children insist that they never financially benefited from the sale of OxyContin. “It is a gross injustice to connect Arthur to the opioid crisis some 30 years after his death when he had nothing to do with it,” Dame Jillian Sackler said in a statement. “It denies the many important contributions he made working to improve world health and to build cultural bridges between peoples.” But activists have made no distinction between Arthur and his relatives. In July, dozens of activists led by Goldin held a protest inside the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard, scattering pill bottles and holding banners that read “SHAME ON SACKLER.” Similar demonstrations have been held at the Met and the Smithsonian. Goldin, who was addicted OxyContin for years, said that getting the institutions to act will be difficult. “Who is going to turn down the money? They offer millions to these institutions, and the board members are not necessarily committed to action, so it’s going to take a lot,” she said. A Met spokesman said that the Sackler family’s support began decades before the opioid crisis, but that the museum will be examining its gift acceptance policies. The Guggenheim, home to the Sackler Center for Arts Education, had no comment. A Harvard spokesman said in an email that Arthur Sackler’s donation in 1982 paid for the construction of the building that originally housed the museum but that his foundation does not fund the museum. ___ Associated Press reporter Verena Dobnik contributed to this report from New York. ___ Follow Alanna Durkin Richer at http://www.twitter.com/aedurkinricher

A:
Opioid crisis brings unwanted attention to wealthy family.
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