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| Words in the News
Monday 10 December 2001
Vocabulary from the news. Listen to and read the report then find explanations of difficult words below.
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Cheap AIDS drugs for Nigeria
Summary: Nigeria today becomes the first African country to start using cheap imported non trademark drugs to treat AIDS and HIV infection. Ten-thousand patients will be treated in selected hospitals with drugs imported from India. This report from Elettra Neysmith:
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| | The News | |
| | | The AIDS pandemic in Africa has been likened to a runaway train ripping through the continent. The figures are staggering. Out of an estimated forty-million people living with HIV or AIDS worldwide, twenty-eight-million are in sub-Saharan Africa. Around ten-million children have lost one or both parents; while in South Africa, fifteen-hundred people are infected each day. The result is a human landscape that has been permanently scarred. Almost everyone has been affected in some way. The crisis has been exacerbated by the fact that AIDS hits at the very infrastructure needed to tackle its effects. Doctors, nurses, and teachers have all fallen victim, weakening the public health systems of some of the world's poorest countries just when they are most needed.
While anti-retroviral drugs have revolutionised treatments in the west, the United Nations joint programme on AIDS estimates that only thirty-thousand people have benefitted in Africa. Even with the advent of cheaper medicines -- access is still likely to be limited and expensive. But although the continent has been the worst affected by AIDS -- it also boasts some of the world's most spectacular success stories. In Uganda, HIV infection rates have fallen by around two-thirds over the last ten years; while in Senegal, the rate is below two percent. The emphasis has been on prevention; and it's taken tremendous political will, and huge education campaigns. There's been no magic formula -- but their example at least offers some hope to those still waking up to the true cost of AIDS.
Elettra Neysmith, BBC News
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| | The Words
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| | | pandemic
a disease affecting people over a wide geographical area
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| | | runaway train
a train that no-one can stop
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| | | a human landscape that has been permanently scarred
a population, and a way of life that has been damaged forever
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| | | exacerbated by
made worse by
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| | | fallen victim
in this case: infected with HIV/AIDS
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| | | with the advent of
with the development of
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| | | boasts
has achieved
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| | | political will
determination by politicians and decision-makers
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| | | magic formula
an easy, quick solution
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| | | waking up to
realising
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