TASK DEFINITION: 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.
PROBLEM: Paragraph: The public-private partnership includes the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank, among others. The funding announcement was made after a meeting of GAVI’s board. GAVI said the investment, which it called an estimate, will be provided between now and 2025. Since the current outbreak in eastern Congo was identified last August, health officials have immunized more than 255,000 people with a recently licensed vaccine made by Merck. To date there have been nearly 3,200 confirmed Ebola cases, including more than 2,200 deaths, in what has become the second deadliest Ebola outbreak in history. Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, chair of Gavi’s board, called the creation of the Ebola vaccine stockpile a “historic milestone in humanity’s fight against this horrific disease.” GAVI said “a coordinating mechanism” to decide how and when vaccines will be used will be established with partner organizations. There are similar stockpiles for vaccines against yellow fever, meningitis and cholera. Those limited shots are doled out to developing countries by WHO, UNICEF, the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders after receiving technical advice from others. The Ebola vaccine stockpile will be available to all countries, but only developing countries will be able to get vaccines for free in addition to support for the logistical costs of mounting vaccination campaigns. Jason Nickerson, a humanitarian affairs adviser at Doctors Without Borders, said the new stockpile would change how officials respond to future Ebola outbreaks. “Knowing how many doses of the vaccine exist in the world, and then being able to get a supply of them to high-risk countries in a very quick way, gives us another tool to respond to these outbreaks,” he said. Earlier this year, the medical charity publicly called for an independent committee to oversee Ebola vaccination efforts in Congo, saying WHO sometimes used arbitrary criteria to determine who would get immunized. It said the fact that Ebola was continuing to spread despite the large number of people vaccinated was a damning assessment of the response. Containing this outbreak has been complicated by violence and misunderstandings in a part of Congo that had never reported an Ebola case before. Last week, response activities were suspended after attacks killed four Ebola responders, including a member of a vaccination team. Multiple rebel groups operate in eastern Congo and the region has been described as a war zone. WHO has warned continued attacks on health workers and Ebola clinics could undermine attempts to curb Ebola and prompt a resurgence of the disease. Claim: Vaccine group announces creation of Ebola vaccine stockpile.

SOLUTION: The vaccine alliance GAVI announced Thursday it would invest $178 million to create a global stockpile of about 500,000 Ebola vaccines, a decision that health officials say could help prevent future outbreaks from spiraling out of control.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: Under the current system, people on a work, study or family visa only pay a £400 surcharge to use the NHS. This is the current level the international health surcharge is set at each year, but the taxes that people who come to work in the UK pay also goes towards things like the NHS. Under the current system, people on a work, study or family visa incur average NHS costs of £625 per year. It’s unclear how the Conservatives have calculated this new figure and we’ve asked them for more information. Claim 1 of 3 Claim: Under the current system, people on a work, study or family visa only pay a £400 surcharge to use the NHS.

SOLUTION: This is the current level the international health surcharge is set at each year, but the taxes that people who come to work in the UK pay also goes towards things like the NHS.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: The release makes no mention of the cost of the drug in question, Tenofovir. A web search found that the cost for a month’s supply of the antiviral drug averages just over $1,000. For some patients, that cost may be prohibitive. The cost is an issue of particular concern for developing countries, but it is also true that the price may be much lower for them than in the United States. Many pharmaceutical companies offer their drugs at steeply discounted rates in poorer countries to expand access to life-saving medicines. The release clearly says that 68 percent of women receiving the drug reduced their viral load while only 2 percent of the women in the control group had that success. It also says that the transmission of hepatitis B from mother to newborn dropped from 18 percent to 5 percent, an important clinical outcome. The release includes a discussion of harms. It states that “tenofovir was well tolerated; only one participant treated with tenofovir voluntarily withdrew from the study due to nausea.”  It also says that researchers “found no significant differences between the tenofovir-treated group and the control group with regard to fetal development and infant growth.”  Lastly, it calls for longer term, observational studies to confirm the safety of fetal exposure to tenofovir treatment. The release provides a good overview of the randomized, placebo-controlled trial which was undertaken to gauge the efficacy of the drug in both reducing the viral load of hepatitis-B-positive mothers and reducing the rate of transmission of the disease from mother to newborn. It offers solid, numerical evidence of both outcomes. It describes the number of patients (200 pregnant women), defined what constituted a “high” viral load, and described the approximate length of treatment. It did omit a mention of whether the trial was blinded. This release does not commit disease mongering. The release notes that the research is funded by Gilead Sciences. It should also have mentioned that a corresponding author disclosed speaking and advising fees from Gilead, according to the published study. The release is comparing the use of an antiviral drug given to pregnant women versus the normal procedure of giving both a vaccine and immune globulin. The release doesn’t mention that tenofovir (marketed as Viread), the drug being tested, is already an FDA approved drug so many readers may not know that it’s available. It was approved by the FDA in 2001 for HIV and in 2008 for chronic hepatitis B. The release just barely implies novelty with this statement which suggests a change in treating infected women who are pregnant: “Based on the findings, the investigators recommend that women be tested for HBV viral load at week 28 of pregnancy. Those with a high viral load should receive tenofovir treatment starting at gestational week 30 until delivery to reduce the risk of transmission to their infants.” While the drug itself isn’t novel, positive outcomes from a controlled trial on pregnant women carrying the virus does seem to introduce a new treatment approach. This release does not use any unjustifiable language. Claim: Antiviral Treatment During Pregnancy Reduces Mother-to-Child Transmission of Hepatitis B

SOLUTION:
This news release describes a clinical trial testing whether an antiviral drug given to pregnant women in their third trimester reduces their hepatitis B viral load. The study also examined whether the drug limits the transmission of the virus from mother to baby. The answers to both questions are yes, suggesting a new strategy for dealing with the spread of this disease. The release does a good job describing harms, quantifying benefits and describing the study protocol. Because the cost of hepatitis drugs has been widely debated for the past few years, a mention of the drug’s cost would have made the release stronger. Almost 240 million people are infected with hepatitis B virus and about 780,000 die each year from the disease, according to the World Health Organization. The hepatitis B virus infects the liver and while many recover with treatment, it can become a chronic infection. Babies and young children infected with the virus are more likely to develop chronic hepatitis B. If administering a drug to infected mothers reduces the proportion of newborns getting the disease, it would be a considerable improvement in public health.