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| Words in the News
Wednesday 24 April 2002
Vocabulary from the news. Listen to and read the report then find explanations of difficult words below.
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Global health fund
Summary: The United Nations Global Fund to fight TB, malaria and AIDS has 700 million dollars to spend. A World Health Organisation report highlights the best ways to begin spending this money. This report from Elizabeth Blunt.
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| | The News | |
| | | The good news is that we already know what works. TB can be tackled by a combination of childhood vaccination, good detection of those infected and close supervision of drug treatment. Peru and Vietnam have both reached the targets of detecting 70% of cases and curing 85% of those treated, and infection rates are now dropping dramatically.
In the case of Malaria, the use of mosquito nets treated with insecticide can reduce the childhood death rate by a fifth. Pregnant women are also very vulnerable, but the report points out that in Africa - the worst affected continent - a relatively high proportion of women do go for ante-natal care, and that these ante-natal visits can be used to give them malaria prophylaxis. Prevention is important because malaria drugs are rapidly losing their effectiveness.
AIDS is the biggest challenge of all, and the report admits that the UN targets are ambitious. But it cites Uganda which has managed to reduce the prevalence of infection among urban women from 29% to just 11% by effective health education. There is still no cure for AIDS, but the report says it is now technically, politically and financially feasible to control the epidemic and to dramatically reduce its spread and impact.
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| | The Words
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| | | childhood vaccination
giving people a vaccine, to protect them against a disease, while they are children
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| | | infection rates
the speed at which people catch a disease over a period of time
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| | | vulnerable
subject to weaknesses that can lead to illness
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| | | relatively high proportion
a fairly high number of all pregnant women
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| | | ante-natal
relating to the medical care of women when they are expecting a baby
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| | | prophylaxis
drugs to prevent a person from catching a disease - here, malaria
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| | | losing their effectiveness
no longer working as well as they once did
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| | | the UN targets
the results (in reducing AIDS) that the UN wants to achieve
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| | | reduce the prevalence
stop infection from being so widespread
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| | | spread and impact
the effect that AIDS has as it affects more and more people
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