VOA慢速英语:New Effort to Fight 10 'Neglected' Tropical Diseases

A new campaign aims to fight ten diseases that affect many of the world's poorest people but do not get much attention. Officials last week announced the London Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases.
一项新运动旨在抗击影响全世界许多穷人却没有得到太多关注的的10种疾病。上周，有官员发布了《对抗被忽视热带病伦敦宣言》。

The diseases include conditions like sleeping sickness, guinea worm and leprosy. They affect more than a billion people worldwide.
这些疾病包括昏睡病、几内亚蠕虫病和麻风病等，它们影响了全世界超过10亿人。

The effort involves thirteen drug companies and the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates. It also includes the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank and health groups.
该成果涉及13家制药公司、美国政府、英国和阿拉伯联合酋长国，还包括比尔和梅林达•盖茨基金会、世界银行以及各个健康组织。
 
The campaign promises almost eight hundred million dollars for drug donation programs. Stephen O'Brien, a member of the British Parliament, was at the launch.
该运动承诺为药物捐赠计划提供近8亿美元。英国国会议员Stephen O'Brien参加了该发布会。

STEPHEN O’BRIEN: "We will increase our financial investment and cumulative spending five-fold, from fifty million pounds ($79 million) to 245 million pounds ($387 million) by twenty-fifteen. That is four treatments a second."
STEPHEN O’BRIEN：“到2015年，我们的金融投资和累计支出将增加5倍，从5千万英镑（约7900万美元）提高到2.45亿英镑（约3.87亿美元）。这是四项措施中的第二项。”

The United States Agency for International Development says neglected tropical diseases, or NTDs, cost governments and businesses ten billion dollars a year. This is in lost productivity and treatment costs.
美国国际开发署称，被忽视的热带病每年花费政府和企业达百亿美元资金。这主要是生产力损失和治疗费用。

Dr. Donan Mmbando is with the Tanzanian Ministry of Health and Social Welfare.
Donan Mmbando博士在坦桑尼亚卫生和社会福利部工作。

DONAN MMBANDO: "The plight of people with the neglected tropical diseases is so real in my country. You need to see people with severe itching, lizard skin, which is a manifestation of river blindness."
DONAN MMBANDO：“在我国，被忽视的热带病的人的处境是如此真实。你需要看看那些患严重瘙痒，蜥蜴皮，这是河盲症的一种表现。”

The declaration calls for control or elimination of the ten diseases by twenty-twenty.
该宣言呼吁到2020年前控制或消除这十种疾病。

Margaret Chan is director-general of the World Health Organization.
Margaret Chan为世界卫生组织总干事。

MARGARET CHAN: "Just think of the prospect of freeing millions of people -- most of them are children and women -- so that they could have a healthy and productive life."
MARGARET CHAN：“试想一下解救数百万人的情景，其中大多数是妇女和儿童，使他们能有一个健康的和富有成效的生活。”

The Gates foundation is giving three hundred sixty-three million dollars to the campaign. Bill Gates talked about the lifelong harm to children with parasitic infections.
盖茨基金会为该运动提供3.63亿美元。比尔•盖茨谈到了遭受寄生虫感染对儿童的终生伤害。

BILL GATES: "The parasitic load that young kids have of those worms means that they are malnourished in a way that their brain never fully develops. So the rest of their life they are permanently impacted by this."
比尔•盖茨：“年幼孩子遭受蠕虫寄生的负担意味着他们营养不良。在他们的大脑没有完全发育好的时候。因此他们的人生都将被这些永远的影响到。”

There have been many campaigns before against neglected tropical diseases. Dr. Neeraj Mistry of the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases says those earlier efforts were not very effective because access to drugs was limited.
原本已经有很多对抗被忽视的热带病的运动。被忽视的热带病全球网络的Neeraj Mistry博士称这些早期运动获取药物的途径非常有限，因此他们不是很成功。

NEERAJ MISTRY: "It’s only through now with the raised awareness and increased commitments from the drug companies, as well as foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the U.S. and the U.K. government, that we can actually take the response to NTDs to scale, which means that we can treat more communities and more people that would get rid of the parasite and avoid reinfection."
NEERAJ MISTRY：“现在唯一的方法是通过提高制药公司以及像比尔和梅林达•盖茨基金会一类的基金会，美国和英国政府的意识，并增加他们的承诺，这样我们才能对被忽视的热带病的规模采取行动，这也就意味着我们可以治疗更多社区和更多人们使他们摆脱寄生虫，并避免重复感染。”

The thirteen drug companies have agreed to share information that could speed up the development of new treatments. The drug companies also agreed to supply billions of doses of drugs every year to help the world’s poorest people.
13家制药公司已经同意共享信息，这可以加快开发新的治疗方法。制药公司还同意每年提供数十亿美元的药物剂量，以帮助世界上最穷的人们。