Health Report - WHO Urges Ban on Blood Test for Tuberculosis
健康报道 - 世卫组织督促禁用血液检测方法诊断结核病
This is the VOA Special English Health Report.
这里是美国之音慢速英语健康报道。
The World Health Organization is urging health officials to ban commonly-available blood tests for tuberculosis. W.H.O. officials made the call after two studies found that results from a commonly used test are undependable and misleading.
世卫组织督促卫生官员禁用市面普遍的血液检测方法诊断结核病。在两项研究发现常用血液检测结果不可靠并存在误导性后，世卫组织官员做出了这一决定。
The blood tests are low-cost and produce fast results. They are widely used in developing countries, especially India. The Indian government says the country has more than two million new cases of TB a year.
血液检测成本低，出结果快，被广泛应用于发展中国家，特别是印度。印度政府表示，印度每年有超过200万例结核病新案例。
But, researchers say the tests being sold are dangerously inaccurate. They say the results are wrong in fifty percent of patients.
但研究人员表示，当前销售的检测方法非常不准确。他们称50%患者的检测结果是错误的。
David Dowdy studies infectious diseases at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. He led one of the studies.
David Dowdy在马里兰州巴尔的摩市约翰霍普金斯大学彭博公共卫生学院研究传染病。他领导了其中一项研究。
DAVID DOWDY: “These tests are actively doing people harm by causing them either to take medicines that they don’t need or delaying the diagnosis that they actually do need, to get better.”
David Dowdy：“这些检测方法正对人们造成伤害，（由于测试结果不准确，）人们要么服用了不该服的药物，要么延误了诊断和治疗。”
Traditional tests for TB examine the sputum, a material found in a person’s lungs. Active TB is identified if certain bacterium grows in the test material. However, these tests take longer to carry out. Dr. Dowdy says the blood tests are widely used because of the speed of results.
结核病传统检测方法检测人类肺部产生的痰液。如果某种特定细菌在检测物中滋生，活性结核病就被确诊。然而，这类检测耗时颇久。Dowdy博士表示，血液检测被广泛应用的原因是出结果快。
DAVID DOWDY: “What these tests do is they measure antibodies in the blood against TB so anytime anyone has been infected with TB at any time in their life, they will develop antibodies. The problem is that one person’s antibodies are not going to be the same as another person’s antibodies. And we don’t have a test yet that can detect these antibodies across the board.”
David Dowdy：“这些检测方法通过检测血液中的结核病抗体来确诊结核病。任何时间任何人在人生任何阶段感染结核病后都将产生抗体。问题是患者与患者之间的抗体不同，我们暂时还没有任何检测方法可以对所有这些抗体进行全面检测。”
The leader of the other study was Madhukar Pai, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He says the tests are usually used by private medical centers -- not government TB control programs.
另一项研究的负责人是Madhukar Pai，他是加拿大蒙特利尔市麦吉尔大学的流行病学家。他表示，这类检测通常被用于私人医疗中心，而不是政府的结核病控制项目。
MADHUKAR PAI: “So these tests are uniformly not used in the developed world. They are mostly used in countries with weak regulation, and lack of regulation allows these sorts of tests to be on the market and used freely.”
MADHUKAR PAI：“因此这类检测在发达国家均遭弃用。它们通常用于监管薄弱的国家。缺乏监管使得各类检测方法流入市场并自由使用。”
Experts say the blood tests are a big business in developing countries, worth millions of dollars a year. The World Health Organization says a million of the tests are done every year. But, the tests are not approved by any recognized supervisory group.
专家表示，血液检测在发展中国家是一项每年价值数百万美元的大业务。世卫组织表示，每年全球进行了上百万次测试，但这类检测方法未获得任何公认监管机构的批准。
Dr. Pai also says the WHO is pushing scientists to continue research for a quick test.
Pai博士还说，世卫组织正推动科学家对快速检测继续进行研究。
MADHUKAR PAI: “[Be]cause someday we want a simple dipstick-like test for TB, as we have for HIV and malaria. But right now we don’t have such a test for TB for point of care use.”
MADHUKAR PAI：“因为我们希望有一天能够有一种简单的试纸类结核病检测方法，就像我们已经拥有的艾滋病和痢疾检测方法一样。但目前尚未有这类医用方面的结核病检测方法。”
And that’s the VOA Special English Health report, written by Caty Weaver, with reporting from Jessica Berman and Vidushi Sinha. For more health news and to learn English, go to voaspecialenglish.com. And follow us on Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning English. I’m Christopher Cruise. |