VOA标准英语2010年-Volunteer Community Health Workers Hel

A new study shows community health workers can effectively and safely treat malaria¹ and pneumonia² with just a little bit of extra training.

In many rural areas throughout sub-Saharan Africa, an important primary medical resource is the network of volunteer community health workers. They have limited training — perhaps six weeks — and may dispense³ some medicines, while referring harder cases to other clinics and hospitals.

When these health workers see children with fever, either malaria and pneumonia could be the cause, so many patients get the wrong treatment.

In this study, conducted in Zambia, some community health workers were trained to use rapid diagnostic tests, which can confirm a malaria case in minutes. The result was a dramatic reduction in the inappropriate use of malaria drugs, says the study's leader, Boston University professor Kojo Yeboah-Antwi.

If you ask community health workers to do a rapid diagnosis⁴ test, and based on the results, give treatment for malaria, there is a four times reduction in the use of the expensive malaria drugs, he said in a telephone interview.

Not only does that save money, but it also reduces the risk of the malaria parasite⁵ developing resistance to the medicine, which has happened repeatedly with other malaria drugs.

With pneumonia, the problem was not giving the wrong drug, but giving any drug at all. In Zambia and many other countries in the region, community health workers are not allowed to prescribe antibiotics⁶, which means that a child who has pneumonia will have to be referred to the nearest health facility to receive antibiotics. And that is a big challenge for people who are not close to health facilities.

Yeboah-Antwi says officials have been reluctant to allow community health workers to administer antibiotics. But the researcher says his study shows the minimally⁷ trained community volunteers did a good job managing and administering the drugs.

Most countries say that the policy is that community health workers should not be giving antibiotics to treat pneumonia at the community level. That policy needs to change!

Kojo Yeboah-Antwi says the success of community health workers in treating malaria and pneumonia in Zambia also suggests a greater role for community-based treatments of other major diseases of children.

His study appears in PloS Medicine, an open access journal published by the Public Library of Science.

1 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。

2 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。

3 dispense   

vt.分配，分发；配(药)，发(药)；实施

参考例句：

• Let us dispense the food.咱们来分发这食物。
• The charity has been given a large sum of money to dispense as it sees fit.这个慈善机构获得一大笔钱，可自行适当分配。

4 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。

5 parasite   

n.寄生虫；寄生菌；食客

参考例句：

• The lazy man was a parasite on his family.那懒汉是家里的寄生虫。
• I don't want to be a parasite.I must earn my own way in life.我不想做寄生虫，我要自己养活自己。

6 antibiotics   

n.（用作复数）抗生素；（用作单数）抗生物质的研究；抗生素，抗菌素( antibiotic的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• the discovery of antibiotics in the 20th century 20世纪抗生素的发现
• The doctor gave me a prescription for antibiotics. 医生给我开了抗生素。

7 minimally   

最低限度地，最低程度地

参考例句：

• Food spoilage problems occur with minimally processed, concentrated frozen citrus products. 食品的变质也发生在轻微加工的、浓缩冷冻的柑橘制品中。
• So, minimally, they are responsible for such actions and omissions. 所以，至少来说，他们要对这样的行为和忽略负责。