VOA常速英语2014--Drug-Resistant TB is Global Threat 耐药性肺结核对全球造成了威胁（在线收听）

Drug-Resistant TB is Global Threat 耐药性肺结核对全球造成了威胁

The medical aid group -- Doctors without Borders -- warns that drug-resistant tuberculosis has become a global threat. It says despite the growing number of cases, there are no effective treatments.

医疗救护组--无国界医生--提醒结核病已经对全球造成了威胁。该组织说，虽然现在的病例不断增加，但是依然没有有效的治疗方案。

Doctors Without Borders has released a Crisis Alert called The New Face of an Old Disease. The group – also known by the French acronym MSF – says urgent action is needed to solve the problem.

无国界医生发布了一个名为旧疾的新面孔的危机预警。该组织-同时也因法语无国界医生缩写为MSF而被认识-说现在需要紧急措施来解决问题。

Dr. Phillip Du Cros, a TB advisor for the group, said, “In MSF’s experience, we are seeing MDR-TB – or multi-drug resistant TB – in more and more countries and in more numbers in our programs.”

为组织担任肺结核病顾问的菲利普狄克罗医生说，在MSF年代的经验,我们在越来越多的国家和越来越多的工程中寻找抗药性结核病-或者结核分枝杆菌。“

There are about 500,000 new cases of MDR-TB every year.

每年约有500,000个抗药性结核病新增病例。

Du Cros said that it’s hard enough dealing with MDR-TB, let alone an even stronger strain of the bacteria that causes XDR-TB or extensively drug resistant tuberculosis. He tells the story of an infected child in Central Asia.

狄克罗医生说，治疗抗药性结核病非常艰难， 需要把一个引起耐药性结核病或者广泛耐药结核病甚至更强的细菌菌株独立起来。他给我们讲了中亚一个感染肺结核的小孩的故事。

“After a year of treatment, she was failing treatment with all the drugs that we have. So this poor child had gone through treatment where she had suffered from nausea almost every day and she was going deaf from one of the drugs. She was having to take over seven different drugs every day, all with different side effects. And despite trying to take all of this treatment she was failing treatment and showing the limits of the treatment that we have available currently,” he said.

他说，“在治疗了一年之后，她已经没有可以治疗的药物了。因此这个可怜的孩子需要经历让她每天都恶心的治疗，而且她还因此耳朵聋了。她不得不每天服用七种不同的药物，并且每种药物都有不同的副作用。现在在尝试着使用所有对她没有效用的治疗，这显示出了目前我们可以使用的治疗方案是很有限的。”

Standard TB drugs do not work against the new forms of the disease. Treatment for MDR-TB could last two years, during which time a patient may swallow 10,000 pills and have daily injections for eight months. And after all that, it may not work.

典型的肺结核药物对新型的病毒起不了作用。对抗药性结核病的治疗可以持续有效两年，在这期间，患者需要吞下10,000颗药丸，并且需要进行为期8个月的每天注射治疗。到了最后，这些可能都不能起到治疗的作用。

Du Cros said, “I think the main reason this has got to be a big problem is that although we’ve made some progress tackling TB, in recent years the global community has turned away from investing in improving on what we can do with TB. We’ve been satisfied with old answers. The reality is that we don’t currently have the answers that will solve the problem of TB. We don’t have actually effective treatments in new regimens that will actually tackle the large epidemic of multi-drug-resistant TB.

狄克罗医生说，“我想主要的原因已经成为了一个大问题：虽然我们在治疗肺结核上已经取得了一些进步，然而在最近几年，地球村拒绝为我们提升对抗肺结核的治疗进行投资。我们已经对以前的方案满意了。事实是我们目前并没有找到可以解决肺结核问题的答案。在针对耐多药结核病的流行的疗法里，我们并没有有效的治疗方案。”

Bacteria can build resistance when TB patients fail to complete their drug regimen – and when countries do not strictly control the use of medications.

细菌在肺结核患者没有完成药物治疗的时候会产生抗体-特别是每个国家没有严格控制药物的使用的时候。

“It’s a global problem, which the global community needs to take responsibility for. Not just international organizations like our own or the World Health Organization, but I think also governments and pharmaceutical companies and academics. There are maybe lots of good individual initiatives, but I think as a global community we really need to come together urgently and look at how we can have faster solutions that are going to deliver a real change at ground level for this epidemic,” he said.

他说，“这是一个全球的问题，地球村应该为此负责。 而不是只有国际组织像我们MSF或者世界卫生组织来关注这个。然而我认为政府和制药公司以及相关学者也应该负有责任。 现在应该有很多好的个人积极分子，但是我认为作为地球村我们真的需要马上团结起来看看我们如何能更快地找到能真正地治疗这种流行病的方案。”

The solution, he said, is a much shorter, more effective treatment. Currently, there are only about five to eight drugs used to treat resistant TB depending on the regimen needed. The two latest drugs available are actually the first new TB medications developed in 40 years.

他说，解决方案需要是一个更快更有效的治疗方案。目前，只有约五到八种药物是针对需要用于抵抗肺结核的。两种最新的在用的药物实际上是用了40年研发出来的肺结核药物。

“Although that’s cause for optimism,” he said, “we still don’t know how to use those drugs in new regimens. And so we’re limited by adding them to a regimen that is already highly toxic and difficult for patients to take.”

“虽然对这个持有乐观态度，”他说，“我们依然不知怎么对耐药性的肺结核使用这些药物，在把他们添加到已有副作用很高让患者难以承受的疗程里收到了限制。”

Dr. Du Cros added if a global investment is not made to address the epidemic there will be a price to pay.

狄克罗医生补充道，如果全球的投资方向没有解决流行病，这将会付出很大的代价。

“As an example, in the United States in the early 90s, there was an outbreak of multi-drug resistant TB. And as a result of a few hundred cases the public health program invested nearly one billion [U.S.] dollars. That number of patients is not even a third of what we see in one of our programs in one country. If we don’t start to step-in early to deal with the problem now, you can multiply that figure by a huge number that you can pluck out of the air.”

”“举个例子，在美国90年代初的时候，曾经爆发过耐多药肺结核。结果公共医疗工程为这几百个病例付出了一百万美元。那个时候的患者甚至没有我们的项目或者一个国家的肺结核患者中的三分之一。如果我们现在早早开始致力于解决问题，你可以将这个数字乘以一个你可以从空气中得来的庞大的数字。”

The Doctors without Borders alert said, “With only one in five people in need receiving treatment, the fatal, airborne disease is left to spread indiscriminately.”

无国界医生告诫说，“虽然五个人里只有一个人需要治疗，但是致命的，空气传播的疾病就会不分青红皂白地开始传播了.”