2006年VOA标准英语-Egypt Suspects Third Human Case of Bird Fl

By Challiss McDonough
Cairo
21 March 2006
 
  
  
Egypt says it might have its third human case of bird flu.  A woman has preliminarily tested positive for the virus, but further tests are being run to confirm the diagnosis¹.  The news comes just days after Egypt announced its first human fatality² from bird-flu.

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Egypt's latest suspected case of avian influenza³ emerged in the same farming region as the two previous cases.  The 30-year-old woman is reported to be in intensive care in a Cairo hospital after having been given the wrong medicine by a clinic in her village.

She comes from Qaliubiya governorate, just north of Cairo.

The deadliest strain of the virus, known as H5N1, was first detected in Egyptian birds last month.  Authorities announced the first human case on Saturday, when they acknowledged that a woman from Qaliubiya had died of bird flu.

The second case was a man from the same province, who is now recovering and expected to be discharged from the hospital within days.  Egyptian state television broadcast an interview with the man, Mohamed Bahaa Abdel-Moneim, who owned a small poultry⁴ farm where all the birds had been killed in accordance with government instructions.

He says he was in the middle of thousands of dead birds.  He says he wore protective gear while they were being slaughtered⁵, including a facemask and gloves, but so much dust and feathers were flying around that he is sure he breathed some of it in.

A spokesman for the World Health Organization (WHO) praised Abdel-Moneim for checking himself into the hospital as soon as he started feeling sick, and for telling his doctors right away that he had been working with birds, so he could get the proper medication early enough to save his life.

WHO spokesman Ibrahim El-Kerdany says some people are still keeping live birds despite government orders to kill them, and are afraid to admit that to their doctors, meaning they do not get the right treatment in time.

"It is when they do not come out and say," he said.  "People sort of live with their birds and sometimes have been trying to evade⁶ the instructions of the national committee to come out and tell us if any of the birds have been infected.  But in both scenarios⁷, of the first and third cases, the women seem to have been slaughtering⁸ their own chickens and there had been H5N1 among the chickens."

Egyptian health authorities say several more people have reported to hospitals with flu-like symptoms and are being checked for the disease as a precaution.

Avian influenza has killed nearly 100 people around the world, mainly in Asia.

1 diagnosis   

n.诊断，诊断结果，调查分析，判断

参考例句：

• His symptoms gave no obvious pointer to a possible diagnosis.他的症状无法作出明确的诊断。
• The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做一次彻底的调查分析。

2 fatality   

n.不幸，灾祸，天命

参考例句：

• She struggle against fatality in vain.她徒然奋斗反抗宿命。
• He began to have a growing sense of fatality.他开始有一种越来越强烈的宿命感。

3 influenza   

n.流行性感冒，流感

参考例句：

• They took steps to prevent the spread of influenza.他们采取措施
• Influenza is an infectious disease.流感是一种传染病。

4 poultry   

n.家禽，禽肉

参考例句：

• There is not much poultry in the shops. 商店里禽肉不太多。
• What do you feed the poultry on? 你们用什么饲料喂养家禽?

5 slaughtered   

v.屠杀，杀戮，屠宰( slaughter的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• The invading army slaughtered a lot of people. 侵略军杀了许多人。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Hundreds of innocent civilians were cruelly slaughtered. 数百名无辜平民遭残杀。 来自《简明英汉词典》

6 evade   

vt.逃避，回避；避开，躲避

参考例句：

• He tried to evade the embarrassing question.他企图回避这令人难堪的问题。
• You are in charge of the job.How could you evade the issue?你是负责人，你怎么能对这个问题不置可否？

7 scenarios   

n.[意]情节；剧本；事态；脚本

参考例句：

• Further, graphite cores may be safer than non-graphite cores under some accident scenarios. 再者，根据一些事故解说，石墨堆芯可比非石墨堆芯更安全一些。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法
• Again, scenarios should make it clear which modes are acceptable to users in various contexts. 同样，我们可以运用场景剧本来搞清楚在不同情境下哪些模式可被用户接受。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓

8 slaughtering   

v.屠杀，杀戮，屠宰( slaughter的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The Revolutionary Tribunal went to work, and a steady slaughtering began. 革命法庭投入工作，持续不断的大屠杀开始了。 来自英汉非文学 - 历史
• \"Isn't it terrific slaughtering pigs? “宰猪的！ 来自汉英文学 - 中国现代小说