VOA标准英语2013--移动诊所为南非农村带来医疗保障（在线收听）

Mobile Clinics Bring Health Care to South Africa Countryside 移动诊所为南非农村带来医疗保障

MOKOPANE, SOUTH AFRICA — South Africa has a serious lack of healthcare facilities in rural areas. In many cases, people must walk for kilometers to reach the closest clinic. But some new solar-powered mobile clinics are changing that.

MOKOPANE,南非,南非农村地区严重缺乏医疗保健设施。大多数情况下，人们必须步行数千米才能到达最近的诊所。但是一些新型太阳能移动诊所却正在改变这一情况。本台记者艾米莉·约布追随着一辆这样的移动拖拉机诊所为我们带回报道。

Women have been waiting outside a seven-meter-long trailer since the early hours of the morning to register with this portable medical clinic.  Once they do, they can get free tests and check up on their health. In a mother and baby unit, women can learn their pregnancy status and have an ultrasound, as well as getting tests for blood pressure and diabetes.

Nchaupe Mathosa is a member of a partner NGO and is volunteering today. "Most people travel for miles to the clinics or looking for assistance, so basically once you bring a unit like this toward the rural people or the people who are in need, it would be very important to have it close-by."

The mobile clinic is an initiative by Samsung Electronics. The company has funded four solar-powered mobile clinics, each of them specialized for health needs such as eye care, dental care or malaria testing.  

The solar panels, combined with batteries, allow the trucks to operate 24 hours a day - in theory.

Kea Modimoeng, Samsung Africa's corporate citizenship manager, said, "In some instances, you have a clinic which is well run by an NGO, but they lack these kind of specialized services. We then bring in the trucks to give it as an add-on service, which is very integral to the healthcare provision."

The company partners with various aid groups, universities and local governments to know where to position its trucks. The project is still in its infancy, though, and sometimes misunderstandings happen. Like today, when neither Samsung nor the partner NGO brought medical gloves or stethoscopes.

"The unit is quite good. It's got a lot of things. It's got solar… but some of the basic things like gloves, working material was not actually readily available," said Mathosa.

For Annah Mushwena, it was worth waiting. She initially went to the clinic to find out her pregnancy status, but she also got tested for diabetes, which she knew little about before.

"I just heard about it, but to be honest, the detail, how does it work, how does it prevent it, I was not even sure about it. But as from today, I can even explain to you how it works," she said.

The project will be fully launched at the beginning of next year with two trucks touring in South Africa and others visiting countries across Africa. Samsung hopes to reach one million people in the rural parts of Africa by 2015.