美国国家公共电台 NPR The Story Behind The Worst Measles Outbreak In The European Union

 

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Measles¹ is one of the most contagious² diseases in the world. But it's been preventable since a vaccine³ was introduced in 1963. So public health officials are surprised that Europe is now reporting tens of thousands of new cases in recent years. Joanna Kakissis has our story from Romania, which has the largest outbreak in the European Union.

JOANNA KAKISSIS, BYLINE⁴: Hello.

LILIANA CZEGLEDI: Hello - Liliana.

KAKISSIS: Liliana Czegledi lives along a country road just outside the city of Timisoara in western Romania. It's here where neighborhood kids play ball in the grass that she doted on her daughter, who could not eat or walk on her own. She'd push the girl's wheelchair around the yard.

CZEGLEDI: (Through interpreter) And I'd sing her favorite song, the one about the ducks. She'd laugh so much and smile. I wanted her to feel good. (Foreign language spoken).

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Foreign language spoken).

KAKISSIS: That's when she's little? Aw. Look at her. Look at her.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Foreign language spoken).

KAKISSIS: Yeah. She has beautiful eyes.

She pulls out a photo of a girl with feathery, blonde hair and a big smile sitting in a custom-made stroller. Czegledi's eyes fill with tears.

CZEGLEDI: (Through interpreter) I miss Ioana. She was my whole universe.

KAKISSIS: Ioana had a compromised immune system, a damaged heart, muscles that did not work.

CZEGLEDI: (Through interpreter) I made sure she never caught a cold because the doctor said a cold could kill her. I only brought her into the hospital when it was absolutely necessary.

KAKISSIS: Like last year, just a month before Ioana was to turn 10, when she had to go to the hospital because she was badly dehydrated. She caught measles there. And within a week, she had died.

Dr. Virgil Musta ran the measles ward⁵ at the infectious diseases hospital where eight Romanians died that same year.

VIRGIL MUSTA: Almost all were children - unvaccinated. They couldn't be vaccinated⁶ because of their illnesses. When they get contact with the virus, they get the disease. And the final was the death.

KAKISSIS: Ioana's compromised immune system had prevented her from getting vaccinated. Another 58 Romanians, many of them children, have died since a measles epidemic⁷ broke out here in 2016. More than 15,000 have caught the virus - nearly half of the total recorded infections in the EU since 2016.

Dr. Dragan Jankovic of the World Health Organization is shocked because Europe seemed on the verge⁸ of eradicating⁹ measles.

DRAGAN JANKOVIC: We have high-quality vaccines¹⁰ since '60s, '70s, which are routinely used in all countries in the region. And we would expect to see that the population in the region is protected.

KAKISSIS: And to be protected, 95 percent of the population must be vaccinated. Immunization rates had dropped to 80 percent in Romania in the years before the outbreak. Public health officials suspect a big reason is a loss of faith in vaccines.

SANDRA ALEXIU: There's lots of fake doctors and fake news on vaccination¹¹ or on any other medical subject.

KAKISSIS: That's family doctor Sandra Alexiu. And she's heard examples of that fake news in her practice outside Bucharest, that the measles vaccine is made of mercury or fetal cells or that there is an international conspiracy¹² to lower the population.

ALEXIU: And we try to explain to every parents that these are wrong. You have to know what's right.

KAKISSIS: And this is a big part of what Romania is doing to control the current outbreak, talking to as many parents as possible. Dr. Alexiu tells them her own son is vaccinated. His photo is in her exam room.

He's that little boy there in the bow tie and the jacket.

ALEXIU: Yes. Yes. He's not so little anymore.

KAKISSIS: But doctors cannot convince everyone, including engineers Lavinia and Dan Onica. They say they just don't believe vaccines are safe for kids.

LAVINIA ONICA: All the toxic¹³ substances that they use and the way they make your body react, that was scary for us. And yeah. We didn't want to take the chance to risk our kid's healthy life.

KAKISSIS: Outreach efforts and a national awareness¹⁴ campaign have pushed measles coverage¹⁵ here to about 90 percent. But health officials say that's still not high enough to prevent another outbreak. For NPR News, I'm Joanna Kakissis in Timisoara, Romania.

1 measles   

n.麻疹，风疹，包虫病，痧子

参考例句：

• The doctor is quite definite about Tom having measles.医生十分肯定汤姆得了麻疹。
• The doctor told her to watch out for symptoms of measles.医生叫她注意麻疹出现的症状。

2 contagious   

adj.传染性的，有感染力的

参考例句：

• It's a highly contagious infection.这种病极易传染。
• He's got a contagious laugh.他的笑富有感染力。

3 vaccine   

n.牛痘苗，疫苗；adj.牛痘的，疫苗的

参考例句：

• The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives.脊髓灰质炎疫苗挽救了数以百万计的生命。
• She takes a vaccine against influenza every fall.她每年秋季接种流感疫苗。

4 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

5 ward   

n.守卫，监护，病房，行政区，由监护人或法院保护的人（尤指儿童）；vt.守护，躲开

参考例句：

• The hospital has a medical ward and a surgical ward.这家医院有内科病房和外科病房。
• During the evening picnic,I'll carry a torch to ward off the bugs.傍晚野餐时，我要点根火把，抵挡蚊虫。

6 vaccinated   

[医]已接种的，种痘的，接种过疫菌的

参考例句：

• I was vaccinated against tetanus. 我接种了破伤风疫苗。
• Were you vaccinated against smallpox as a child? 你小时候打过天花疫苗吗？

7 epidemic   

n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的

参考例句：

• That kind of epidemic disease has long been stamped out.那种传染病早已绝迹。
• The authorities tried to localise the epidemic.当局试图把流行病限制在局部范围。

8 verge   

n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临

参考例句：

• The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
• She was on the verge of bursting into tears.她快要哭出来了。

9 eradicating   

摧毁，完全根除( eradicate的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Objective: To study the acute and chronic toxicity of Ten-flavor-acne eradicating-capsule. 目的：探讨复方中药合剂十味平痤胶囊的急性及慢性毒性。
• We are on the verge of eradicating polio in the world. 我们已在世界消除小儿？痹症的边缘了。

10 vaccines   

疫苗，痘苗( vaccine的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• His team are at the forefront of scientific research into vaccines. 他的小组处于疫苗科研的最前沿。
• The vaccines were kept cool in refrigerators. 疫苗放在冰箱中冷藏。

11 vaccination   

n.接种疫苗，种痘

参考例句：

• Vaccination is a preventive against smallpox.种痘是预防天花的方法。
• Doctors suggest getting a tetanus vaccination every ten years.医生建议每十年注射一次破伤风疫苗。

12 conspiracy   

n.阴谋，密谋，共谋

参考例句：

• The men were found guilty of conspiracy to murder.这些人被裁决犯有阴谋杀人罪。
• He claimed that it was all a conspiracy against him.他声称这一切都是一场针对他的阴谋。

13 toxic   

adj.有毒的，因中毒引起的

参考例句：

• The factory had accidentally released a quantity of toxic waste into the sea.这家工厂意外泄漏大量有毒废物到海中。
• There is a risk that toxic chemicals might be blasted into the atmosphere.爆炸后有毒化学物质可能会进入大气层。

14 awareness   

n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智

参考例句：

• There is a general awareness that smoking is harmful.人们普遍认识到吸烟有害健康。
• Environmental awareness has increased over the years.这些年来人们的环境意识增强了。

15 coverage   

n.报导，保险范围，保险额，范围，覆盖

参考例句：

• There's little coverage of foreign news in the newspaper.报纸上几乎没有国外新闻报道。
• This is an insurance policy with extensive coverage.这是一项承保范围广泛的保险。