VOA标准英语2013--预防儿童结核病死亡

 

Stopping Childhood TB Deaths 预防儿童结核病死亡

Tuberculosis¹ kills more than 74-thousand children every year. But health officials say those deaths are preventable. The World Health Organization and its partners have released a roadmap outlining the steps needed to end childhood TB deaths.

The roadmap says the urgency of the TB problem in children cannot be underestimated. Dr. Mario Raviglione, director of the WHO’s Global Tuberculosis Program, said, “The perspective we have of the TB issue, the TB problem, in children is today not, I would say, fully² complete. It has proven quite difficult to estimate what the burden is for a number of technical reasons.”

Children account for about 500,000 new cases every year. But the number could be much higher because is difficult to diagnose the disease in kids.

“It is not the normal way of presenting tuberculosis like among adults – where the majority of patients will have fever, cough, night sweats, weight loss and so on. In children, it may appear in a more subtle way. And children tend not to have a lot of these pulmonary symptoms, lung symptoms that in fact are typical of tuberculosis in the adults. So if you don’t really suspect it – and if you don’t go after it – you may easily miss the diagnosis³,” he said.

The Roadmap for Childhood TB: Toward Zero Deaths is a joint⁴ effort that includes the WHO, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF, USAID and a number of NGOs.

Raviglione said that the response must be tailored-made for children.

“Starting with the notion that everything that is done in tuberculosis control and care, in general, among adults and so on, needs to be now much more sensitive to the special needs that you have in children – whether we’re talking about surveillance, reporting of the cases, the diagnosis, the treatment of the case or the research in tuberculosis in children. Everything has to be in a way re-thought in such a way that it becomes children-sensitive, and we can advance in our knowledge and our understanding of the problem.”

Raising awareness⁵ about childhood TB is made more difficult because most of those infected are poor.

He said, “In developing countries, in poor areas, tuberculosis can really hide in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro or in the rural villages of Africa without people being aware of what it is. And where you have poor access to care, poor access to clinics, to hospitals, etcetera, becomes more difficult. And so what happened there is that children probably deteriorate⁶ progressively and eventually die without ever having a diagnosis of tuberculosis established.”

It’s estimated it would cost $120 million a year to implement⁷ the TB roadmap. Raviglione said it’s a small price to pay to stop children from dying from TB. 

The roadmap does report good news at the country level. It says there’s been “a significant transformation⁸ of political will and commitment to intensify⁹ efforts to address TB among children.”

1 tuberculosis   

n.结核病，肺结核

参考例句：

• People used to go to special health spring to recover from tuberculosis.人们常去温泉疗养胜地治疗肺结核。
• Tuberculosis is a curable disease.肺结核是一种可治愈的病。

2 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

3 diagnosis   

n.诊断，诊断结果，调查分析，判断

参考例句：

• His symptoms gave no obvious pointer to a possible diagnosis.他的症状无法作出明确的诊断。
• The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做一次彻底的调查分析。

4 joint   

adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合

参考例句：

• I had a bad fall,which put my shoulder out of joint.我重重地摔了一跤，肩膀脫臼了。
• We wrote a letter in joint names.我们联名写了封信。

5 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。

6 deteriorate   

v.变坏；恶化；退化

参考例句：

• Do you think relations between China and Japan will continue to deteriorate?你认为中日关系会继续恶化吗？
• He held that this would only cause the situation to deteriorate further.他认为，这只会使局势更加恶化。

7 implement   

n.(pl.)工具，器具；vt.实行，实施，执行

参考例句：

• Don't undertake a project unless you can implement it.不要承担一项计划，除非你能完成这项计划。
• The best implement for digging a garden is a spade.在花园里挖土的最好工具是铁锹。

8 transformation   

n.变化；改造；转变

参考例句：

• Going to college brought about a dramatic transformation in her outlook.上大学使她的观念发生了巨大的变化。
• He was struggling to make the transformation from single man to responsible husband.他正在努力使自己由单身汉变为可靠的丈夫。

9 intensify   

vt.加强；变强；加剧

参考例句：

• We must intensify our educational work among our own troops.我们必须加强自己部队的教育工作。
• They were ordered to intensify their patrols to protect our air space.他们奉命加强巡逻，保卫我国的领空。