VOA标准英语2012--Rotavirus Vaccine Arrives in Rwanda

 

Rotavirus Vaccine¹ Arrives in Rwanda

More than 3,000 Rwandan children die every year from diarrhea. But health officials say that’s about to change with the introduction of the rotavirus vaccine. Rwanda is the latest in a growing number of African countries to receive the vaccine.

It’s estimated that worldwide more than 1200 children die each day from rotavirus infection. Almost all of them are in developing countries.

“Rotavirus is the leading cause of diarrhea. In fact, in Africa, 40 percent of children who are hospitalized for diarrhea have rotavirus. And therefore it’s a major killer² causing a lot of the child mortality that still exists on the continent,” said Dr. Seth Berkley, CEO of the GAVI Alliance, a Geneva-based public-private health partnership³.

“Rwanda of course is a country that has enormous attention to public health. It’s done a very good job. They have an immunization rate that’s greater than 95 percent. But they still have children that die of diarrhea and particularly rotavirus. The expectation is that about 3,500 Rwandan children die every year from rotavirus diseases, accounting⁴ for close to 10 percent of all the under 5 deaths,” he said.

Berkley said virtually all of those deaths can be prevented.

“We’re in the process of trying to get this out to all of the countries. So since 2006, 28 GAVI eligible⁵ countries have been approved to receive it. And so we’re trying to scale-up even more than that although obviously it takes time to get it out to all the countries and some are more prepared than others,” he said.

Asked whether parents in developing countries have expressed fear over the vaccine, he said there’s actually more hesitancy in developed nations.

“Parents don’t remember what these diseases are like and they think we don’t want to take any risk with our children, you know, maybe we’ll just skip them,” he said.

He said parents in developing countries have a much different prospective⁶ that comes from first-hand experience.

“The interesting thing of course in these countries everybody sees these diseases around them all the time. They’ve lost relatives to these diseases, friends, family members and so when these vaccines⁷ rollout in these countries there tends to be an enormous demand from the population for them,” he said.

Berkley is the founder⁸ and former head of IAVI, the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. He said he foresees the day when an HIV vaccine will become part of routine immunizations.

“Absolutely, and in fact it probably won’t start as childhood immunizations. I suspect as soon as a vaccine is available – and obviously it can’t be soon enough – we expect it’ll start I n high-risk groups and then in adolescents,” he said.

The second biggest killer of children under 5 is pneumonia⁹. Berkley says pneumococcal vaccine is rolling out even faster than the rotavirus vaccine. Rwanda has already made it part of its immunization program and was one of the first developing countries to do so.

1 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。

2 killer   

n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者

参考例句：

• Heart attacks have become Britain's No.1 killer disease.心脏病已成为英国的头号致命疾病。
• The bulk of the evidence points to him as her killer.大量证据证明是他杀死她的。

3 partnership   

n.合作关系，伙伴关系

参考例句：

• The company has gone into partnership with Swiss Bank Corporation.这家公司已经和瑞士银行公司建立合作关系。
• Martin has taken him into general partnership in his company.马丁已让他成为公司的普通合伙人。

4 accounting   

n.会计，会计学，借贷对照表

参考例句：

• A job fell vacant in the accounting department.财会部出现了一个空缺。
• There's an accounting error in this entry.这笔账目里有差错。

5 eligible   

adj.有条件被选中的；(尤指婚姻等)合适(意)的

参考例句：

• He is an eligible young man.他是一个合格的年轻人。
• Helen married an eligible bachelor.海伦嫁给了一个中意的单身汉。

6 prospective   

adj.预期的，未来的，前瞻性的

参考例句：

• The story should act as a warning to other prospective buyers.这篇报道应该对其他潜在的购买者起到警示作用。
• They have all these great activities for prospective freshmen.这会举办各种各样的活动来招待未来的新人。

7 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。

8 Founder   

n.创始者，缔造者

参考例句：

• He was extolled as the founder of their Florentine school.他被称颂为佛罗伦萨画派的鼻祖。
• According to the old tradition,Romulus was the founder of Rome.按照古老的传说，罗穆卢斯是古罗马的建国者。

9 pneumonia   

n.肺炎

参考例句：

• Cage was struck with pneumonia in her youth.凯奇年轻时得过肺炎。
• Pneumonia carried him off last week.肺炎上星期夺去了他的生命。