VOA常速英语:Global Efforts to Control TB Are Falling Short(翻译)

A simple cough can spread a number of deadly diseases including tuberculosis.

“TB is the threat that can be spread by an aerosolized spread:by not a behavior that increases your risk, but by standing behind somebody in line who coughs and infects you with a micro-bacterium.No high-risk behavior associated with it other than wrong place at the wrong time.”

In a Skype interview, Dr. Eric Goosby explained that TB kills about 5,000 people a day. Yet it doesn’t have to be so deadly.

“We can diagnose it, we can treat it with effective anti-microbacterial drugs,and cure it in about 90 percent of cases with the current drugs that are available.”

Yet tuberculosis is considered as a disease of the past in many developed countries.And budgets to fight it have been slashed.TB has been vastly undercounted in countries like India where it’s prevalent.Elsewhere health budgets and medical workers have focused on fighting Zika,Ebola and other emergent diseases while TB has been ignored.And that’s what has Dr. Goosby concerned.

“Our political will has waned, and it has been de-prioritized in ministries of health as the urgent,emergent disease to respond to. And as a result, we see TB beginning to increase in the number of deaths it’s causing. We are now at a death rate of 1.8 million a year,which puts TB as the number-one infectious disease killer on the planet.”

TB thrives in crowded areas where people lacking of food and good sanitation,which makes them susceptible to disease.But as the world learned with Ebola, it’s not just a disease of the poor.

Travel took Ebola around the world.It can do the same with TB.That’s why the United Nations is trying to refocus the world’s attention on tuberculosis.If all countries, rich and poor, cooperate, TB infections can be stopped.The goal is to end the disease by 2030.

Carol Pearson, VOA news, Washington.