VOA标准英语2015--感染艾滋病儿童更有可能死于肺炎

 

HIV Kids Are High Risk for Pneumonia¹ 感染艾滋病儿童更有可能死于肺炎

A new study said HIV-positive children are much more likely to die from pneumonia than children who are not infected with the AIDS virus. It’s estimated there are more than three million children under age 14 living with HIV. The vast majority are in sub-Saharan Africa.

Researchers said deaths from pneumonia among HIV-positive children could be dramatically reduced by expanding current treatments.

Dr. Harish Nair led the study to better understand the scope of the problem. He’s with the University of Edinburgh’s Center for Population Health Sciences.

“We’ve been working on pneumonia estimates for over a decade now. And we realized that there are no estimates for pneumonia and HIV-infected children. We all know that pneumonia is an important cause of morbidity² and mortality in HIV-infected children,” he said.

While it was clear pneumonia threatened HIV-positive children, Nair says it was not known just how many were actually affected³. The global study his team conducted – the first of its kind – shed light on the problem.

He said, “What we see is globally of the 116 million episodes of pneumonia occurring each year in under-five children, one-point-four-million episodes are in HIV-infected children. And of the 920,000 deaths from pneumonia in under-five children we find there are 88,000 deaths in HIV-infected children.”

Africa and South Asia are the worst regions for HIV-positive children dying from pneumonia. Their weakened immune systems put them at greater risk. Pneumonia has been linked to poverty, poor living conditions and inadequate⁴ health services.

“To put this into perspective,” he said, “a child who has HIV and who develops pneumonia has a 36-fold higher risk of dying compared to a healthy child, who is HIV uninfected.”

The study was commissioned by the World Health Organization and published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal. The findings will be used to develop new care and treatment guidelines.

Nair said that AIDS drugs keep patients healthier and make them less susceptible⁵ to pneumonia. But he says while sub-Saharan Africa now has greater access to AIDS drugs, most of them are for adults.

“Even now, the antiretroviral coverage⁶ in young children remains⁷ pretty low. For example, the data for coverage of antiretrovirals in children under five years is not available. The other problem is that the antiretroviral coverage in children across the zero-to-14-year age group remains pretty low. It’s about only 29 percent in these 22 high priority global action plan countries.”

Dr. Nair said opportunistic infections are very common in children with HIV. However, he said very few – only about 30 percent – receive the drug Co-trimoxazole. The drug has been shown to lower the overall infection rate, not only for pneumonia, but also for malaria⁸ and sepsis.

He also said children with HIV should be a top priority when administering the pneumococcal vaccine⁹.

“There have been studies which have shown that in HIV-infected children once you’ve introduced the pneumococcal vaccine the incidence of pneumonia decreased sharply,” he said.

He added that diagnosing pneumonia in HIV-positive children needs to be “strengthened at the primary care level.” Nair also recommended “rapidly scaling up” antiretroviral therapy for pregnant women and young children with HIV.

1 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。

2 morbidity   

n.病态；不健全；发病；发病率

参考例句：

• MC's also significantly reduce the morbidity and mortality induced by honeybee venom. 肥大细胞同样也能显著降低蜜蜂毒液诱发疾病的发病率和死亡率。 来自互联网
• The result shows that incidence of myopia morbidity is 44.84%. 结果表明：近视眼的发病率为44.84%。 来自互联网

3 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

4 inadequate   

adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的

参考例句：

• The supply is inadequate to meet the demand.供不应求。
• She was inadequate to the demands that were made on her.她还无力满足对她提出的各项要求。

5 susceptible   

adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的

参考例句：

• Children are more susceptible than adults.孩子比成人易受感动。
• We are all susceptible to advertising.我们都易受广告的影响。

6 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。

7 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

8 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。

9 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。