VOA慢速英语2009年-Development Report - Health Insurance Ease

This is the VOA Special English Development Report.
　
A market in Dakar, Senegal

In Senegal, some people receive medical coverage¹ from large employers. Some buy their own insurance. But most Senegalese are uninsured, especially the poor -- a common story across Africa and elsewhere. If they get injured or sick, they must somehow pay the costs themselves, or go untreated.

The lack of health insurance is greatest among workers who deal in the informal cash economy. They include what Africans call "market women" -- women who sell produce and other food at local markets.

But a women's cooperative² in Senegal is offering low-cost health insurance for market women. The coverage is offered through a credit union, part of what is called the Network of Programs for Urban and Rural Women.

More than twenty thousand women now pay into the insurance program. It pays for care at participating health centers. But it does not pay for conditions that existed before a person was insured, or for cancer, heart disease or H.I.V./AIDS.

Instead, the program is meant to help poor families deal with common health needs without having to borrow money.

The plan can insure as many as fifteen people in a family. Families can also get twenty-five percent off the cost of medicines. And pregnant³ women can get low-cost care through deals with several public hospitals and clinics.

Oulimatta Tigerre is an independent businesswoman. She sells vegetables and dried fish at a small wooden stand on a dirt road near Dakar, Senegal's capital. Her husband has been unemployed⁴, and she worried that they could not pay the family's medical bills. Then she joined the credit union. The health insurance costs two dollars a month for her family of five.

She got sick while she was pregnant. The program, she says, paid all her hospital bills. And when her children get malaria⁵, the insurance pays their bills. "This program is very important," she says, "because it saves us from the worry of where to get the money to pay the doctor."

Oulimatta Tigerre has used some of the money she saved from not having to pay hospital bills to expand her business.

But to have such satisfied members, experts say, a health insurance cooperative needs a large group of people. This is known as pooling risk. If the group is small, each member has to pay more, and that would exclude the poorest.

And that's the VOA Special English Development Report, written by Jerilyn Watson, with Scott Stearns in Senegal. I'm Steve Ember.

1 coverage   

n.报导，保险范围，保险额，范围，覆盖

参考例句：

• There's little coverage of foreign news in the newspaper.报纸上几乎没有国外新闻报道。
• This is an insurance policy with extensive coverage.这是一项承保范围广泛的保险。

2 cooperative   

adj.有合作意向的，合作的；n.合作社（企业）等

参考例句：

• The workmen are very cooperative,so the work goes on smoothly.工人们十分合作，所以工作进展顺利。
• We decided to set up a cooperative.我们决定开办一家合作社。

3 pregnant   

adj.怀孕的，怀胎的

参考例句：

• She is a pregnant woman.她是一名孕妇。
• She is pregnant with her first child.她怀了第一胎。

4 unemployed   

adj.失业的，没有工作的；未动用的，闲置的

参考例句：

• There are now over four million unemployed workers in this country.这个国家现有四百万失业人员。
• The unemployed hunger for jobs.失业者渴望得到工作。

5 malaria   

n.疟疾

参考例句：

• He had frequent attacks of malaria.他常患疟疾。
• Malaria is a kind of serious malady.疟疾是一种严重的疾病。