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: Irish-born William Campbell and Japan's Satoshi Omura won half of the prize for discovering avermectin, a derivative of which has been used to treat hundreds of millions of people with river blindness and lymphatic filariasis, or elephantiasis. China's Tu Youyou was awarded the other half of the prize for discovering artemisinin, a drug that has slashed malaria deaths and has become the mainstay of fighting the mosquito-borne disease. She is China's first Nobel laureate in medicine. Some 3.4 billion people, most of them living in poor countries, are at risk of contracting the three parasitic diseases. "These two discoveries have provided humankind with powerful new means to combat these debilitating diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people annually," the Nobel Assembly at Sweden's Karolinska Institute said. "The consequences in terms of improved human health and reduced suffering are immeasurable." Today, the medicine ivermectin, a derivative of avermectin made by Merck & Co, is used worldwide to fight roundworm parasites, while artemisinin-based drugs from firms including Novartis and Sanofi are the main weapons against malaria. Omura and Campbell made their breakthrough in fighting parasitic worms, or helminths, after studying compounds from soil bacteria. That led to the discovery of avermectin, which was then further modified into ivermectin. The treatment is so successful that river blindness and lymphatic filariasis are now on the verge of being eradicated. Omura, 80, said the real credit for the achievement should go to the ingenuity of the Streptomyces bacteria, whose naturally occurring chemicals were so effective at killing off parasites. "I really wonder if I deserve this," he said after learning he had won the prize. "I have done all my work depending on microbes and learning from them, so I think the microbes might almost deserve it more than I do." Omura is professor emeritus at Kitasato University in Japan, while Campbell is research fellow emeritus at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. "This was the work of a team of researchers so it is by no means my work, it's our work," said Campbell, 85, who learned of his prize in a pre-dawn phone call from Reuters that woke him at his home in North Andover, Massachusetts. "In the first decade, there were 70 authors that I co-authored papers with. That gives you some idea of the number of people involved," he said. Tu, meanwhile, turned to a traditional Chinese herbal medicine in her hunt for a better malaria treatment, following the declining success of the older drugs chloroquine and quinine. She found that an extract from the plant Artemisia annua was sometimes effective but the results were inconsistent, so she went back to ancient literature, including a recipe from AD 350, in the search for clues. This eventually led to the isolation of artemisinin, a new class of anti-malaria drug, which was available in China before it reached the West. Tu, 84, has worked at the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine since 1965. World Health Organization spokesman Gregory Hartl said the award of a Nobel prize for the discovery was a great tribute to the contribution of Chinese science in fighting malaria. "We now have drugs that kill these parasites very early in their life-cycle," said Juleen Zierath, chair of the Nobel Committee. "They not only kill these parasites but they stop these infections from spreading." Death rates from malaria have plunged 60 percent in the past 15 years, although the disease still kills around half a million people a year, the vast majority of them babies and young children in the poorest parts of Africa. The 8 million Swedish crowns ($960,000) medicine prize is the first of the Nobel prizes awarded each year. Prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace were first awarded in 1901 in accordance with the will of dynamite inventor and businessman Alfred Nobel. Last year, the medicine prize went to three scientists who discovered the brain's inner navigation system. Claim: Beating parasites wins three scientists Nobel prize for medicine.

SOLUTION: Three scientists from Japan, China and Ireland whose discoveries led to the development of potent new drugs against parasitic diseases including malaria and elephantiasis won the Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: We give the story credit for at least citing a $30,000 cost for the "surgeries" but wish it had explained what that included and what it might not. Surgery to change the battery every two years certainly adds to cost. Undoubtedly patients require more intensive expensive followup and perhaps specialized checks to ensure the device is working. With broad strokes across discussion of three different uses for three different conditions, the story did an adequate job quantifiying benefits. As stated in the "Evidence" criterion above, this is where a control group and reporting response rates for treated versus control groups would be very informative. Instead, we only get a qualitative description of benefits which is useful but which might leave careful readers asking for more. This is one area where the story could have been improved. There was no detailed discussion of what can go wrong with deep brain stimulation. There was a brief mention of "if" the electrodes cause neurological side effects. But how often does that happen? And the story noted that the surgery does "sometimes" cause dangerous brain bleeding or infections. How often is "sometimes"? At a very high, overview level, the story explained the current state of the evidence. But more information would have been better. Current evidence for depression/OCD is based on case series. These studies don't have a control group, making the results more subject to bias. No disease mongering of any of the conditions discussed. The story was repeatedly clear about deep brain stimulation being used when standard medications or behavior therapy had not worked. But it would be helpful to give estimates of the proportion of patients with depression or OCD who aren't helped by available treatments. Several sources were cited. Dr. Mayberg's connection to St. Jude Medical was mentioned. The story could have mentioned that Dr. Okun's center and Dr. Greenberg have received funding from Medtronic. Greenberg's current funding from the National Institute of Mental Health was noted. We think the sourcing and disclosure was adequate. A strong point of the story was that it repeatedly provided the context for the use of deep brain stimulation "when standard medications failworst-case patientsdoesn't mean patients can abandon traditional therapypeople with intractable (problems)(people who) failed behavior therapy." This story already attempted to accomplish a lot, but to be complete, it could have offered explicit description of currently approved options: antidepressant medications (multiple classes); psychotherapy (multiple options); combinations of medications or medications and therapy; transcranial magnetic stimulation (limited availabilty), vagal nerve stimulation, ECT and estimate of the proportion of patients who fail these treatments. Nonethless, we feel it met the criteria for a satisfactory score. The story states that 70,000 have had deep brian stimulation for Parkinson's or other movement disorders, and that studies are underway on at least 60 people with intractable obsessive-compulsive disorder and 100 with severe depression. The experimental nature of these approaches is clear from the story. A nice touch would be to give a link to clinicaltrials.gov to allow readers the option of looking up more information on the studies in progress and finding out if recruitment is open and how to access the study. The story did a good job putting the new uses of deep brain stimulation into the context of other research and other therapeutic approaches. It's clear that the story did not rely on a news release. Claim: Trying brain pacemakers to zap psychiatric disease

SOLUTION: We especially appreciate the lack of hype in this story. The reporter clearly worked hard to stick to the evidence not merely to promote the potential. About 65-70 percent of patients with major depressive disorder improve substantially with 1 to 2 course of standard treatment (medication, psychotherapy or combinations). Subsequent treatment options have progressively lower rates of treatment response. Therefore, a significant number of people need other treatment options. Deep brain stimulation is an invasive treatment, but one that has shown promise in a small number of patients.

PROBLEM: Paragraph: The 56-year-old family doctor from Massachusetts was among a handful of Americans treated and cured of Ebola during West Africa's deadly epidemic in 2014, which was the worst ever outbreak of the virus, claiming more than 11,000 lives over two years, primarily in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Sacra contracted the virus while delivering babies at ELWA, a missionary hospital in the Liberian capital of Monrovia where he's worked for more than two decades. He was evacuated and treated in Omaha, Nebraska, but within months, Sacra was back at ELWA which stands for "Eternal Love Winning Africa" treating patients. The devout Christian, who says he dreamed of becoming a missionary since he was a child, hasn't stopped going back since. "It's our adopted home," Sacra said Wednesday as he and his wife Debbie took a rare break at their home outside Worcester, Massachusetts, where he's on the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. "My wife and I have been going to Liberia since 1987. Our kids grew up there. So the idea of not going would be harder for me than the idea of going back." Sacra was honored Thursday by the African Mission Healthcare Foundation for his work in Liberia, a nation founded as a colony of freed African American slaves in the 19th century. The organization awarded him the L'Chaim Prize for Outstanding Christian Medical Missionary Service at a ceremony in New York City. The annual prize comes with a $500,000 gift. Sacra said the money will be used at ELWA to build an intensive care unit, install solar panels and build out a training program for family physicians that he founded in 2017. The 107-bed hospital was founded in 1965 and is run by SIM, an evangelical Christian organization based in North Carolina. Increasing the ranks of family doctors is a small but critical piece in rebuilding the nation, which had never fully recovered from more than a decade of civil war before Ebola struck, Sacra said. "One of the things the Ebola crisis really highlighted was how weak the health system in Liberia was. The whole system just collapsed because there were too few trained doctors and nurses," he said. "So one of our goals as a mission is to strengthen that health system. To not just bring over doctors, but to train local physicians and build up their capacity so that something like this won't happen again." Ebola has continued to flare up in other parts of Africa, particularly the Congo, where more than 300 have died since last summer. But Sacra believes Liberia is better prepared than it was five years ago. More doctors are graduating from local medical programs, the national government has established a public health monitoring and education system, and an experimental Ebola vaccine is being tested. "Building a health system from scratch is not something you can do in a year or two," Sacra said. "It's a generation long project." With their three sons now in their 20s and beginning their own careers, Sacra says he and his wife are committed to being a part of those efforts for the foreseeable future. "We're just grateful God gave us a second chance to continue to make an impact," he said. ___ This story has been corrected to show that Sierra Leone, not Ghana, was among the primary countries affected by the 2014 Ebola epidemic. Claim: US doctor who survived Ebola honored for service in Liberia.

SOLUTION:
Almost five years have passed since he nearly died of Ebola in Liberia, but Richard Sacra has never wavered from his commitment to the struggling West African nation.