VOA常速英语2007年-Doctors: Ebola Outbreak Appears to be Contained

By Alisha Ryu
Naibobi
10 December 2007

Health officials in Uganda say laboratory tests have shown that an outbreak of the deadly Ebola disease in the western part of the country has not spread to the east, as officials had feared. As VOA Correspondent Alisha Ryu reports from our East Africa Bureau in Nairobi, health workers in Uganda have been besieged¹ by rumors² of Ebola cases, complicating³ the task of containing the outbreak.

The Director General of Medical Services in Uganda's ministry⁴ of health, Dr. Sam Okware, tells VOA that several people who had been under observation near Lake Victoria and a district of the country's eastern region near the Kenyan border have been cleared of the virus that causes the Ebola disease.

"Fortunately, we have found that they are all negative. The laboratory results have just come out and they are all negative. So, basically, the disease started in Bundibugyo and it is continuing in that area. We hope it will remain that way," he said.

Dr. Okware says since the outbreak began in August, nearly 110 people in the Bundibugyo district, 350 kilometers west of the Ugandan capital Kampala, have tested positive for the virus that causes Ebola, an extremely contagious⁵ blood-borne disease first discovered in Congo Kinshasa in 1976.

Scientists still have not been able to identify the source of the virus and there is no known cure for the disease.

In recent weeks, rumors of Ebola infections have also swept through the Ugandan capital, in western Kanungu and Kasese districts and northwestern Adjuman district.

Officials deployed⁶ health teams to investigate. But Dr. Okware says they have found nothing to suggest that the outbreak has spread beyond the outbreak's epicenter, where hundreds of people remain under intense observation.

Common symptoms of Ebola include high fever and headaches, followed by bleeding from openings in the body. Ebola is usually spread through contact with the body fluids of an infected person or someone who has died of the disease.

Twenty-eight people in Bundibugyo have died in the outbreak, including five health workers who had been treating Ebola-infected patients at the local hospital.

Health officials in the United States and the United Nations on high alert because the outbreak is caused by a strain of Ebola virus that scientists have never seen before. It is not known whether the new strain has the potential to spread more quickly or become more lethal⁷ than other sub-types of the hemorrhagic fever.

The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention has set up a laboratory in Uganda to help identify new cases and the World Health Organization says it is training local healthcare workers on measures to stem the deadly microbe.

Meanwhile, Dr. Okware says Ugandan officials are doing their best to keep the disease from spreading.

"First, we discourage any unnecessary movement; secondly⁸, by making sure that those who are sick do not move from place to place and thirdly, by making sure we provide adequate information to everybody," he said.

Ugandan health officials also say they are investigating reports of outbreaks of meningitis, bubonic plague, cholera⁹, and hepatitis in the north and northwestern part of the country.

1 besieged   

包围，围困，围攻( besiege的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• Paris was besieged for four months and forced to surrender. 巴黎被围困了四个月后被迫投降。
• The community besieged the newspaper with letters about its recent editorial. 公众纷纷来信对报社新近发表的社论提出诘问，弄得报社应接不暇。

2 rumors   

n.传闻( rumor的名词复数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷v.传闻( rumor的第三人称单数 )；[古]名誉；咕哝；[古]喧嚷

参考例句：

• Rumors have it that the school was burned down. 有谣言说学校给烧掉了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Rumors of a revolt were afloat. 叛变的谣言四起。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 complicating   

使复杂化( complicate的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• High spiking fever with chills is suggestive of a complicating pylephlebitis. 伴有寒战的高热，暗示合并门静脉炎。
• In America these actions become executive puberty rites, complicating relationships that are already complicated enough. 在美国，这些行动成了行政青春期的惯例，使本来已经够复杂的关系变得更复杂了。

4 ministry   

n.(政府的)部；牧师

参考例句：

• They sent a deputation to the ministry to complain.他们派了一个代表团到部里投诉。
• We probed the Air Ministry statements.我们调查了空军部的记录。

5 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。

6 deployed   

（尤指军事行动）使展开( deploy的过去式和过去分词 )； 施展； 部署； 有效地利用

参考例句：

• Tanks have been deployed all along the front line. 沿整个前线已部署了坦克。
• The artillery was deployed to bear on the fort. 火炮是对着那个碉堡部署的。

7 lethal   

adj.致死的；毁灭性的

参考例句：

• A hammer can be a lethal weapon.铁锤可以是致命的武器。
• She took a lethal amount of poison and died.她服了致命剂量的毒药死了。

8 secondly   

adv.第二，其次

参考例句：

• Secondly,use your own head and present your point of view.第二，动脑筋提出自己的见解。
• Secondly it is necessary to define the applied load.其次，需要确定所作用的载荷。

9 cholera   

n.霍乱

参考例句：

• The cholera outbreak has been contained.霍乱的发生已被控制住了。
• Cholera spread like wildfire through the camps.霍乱在营地里迅速传播。