The principal factor depressing life expectancy in developing countries has always been the high death rate for infants and chil

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问题    The principal factor depressing life expectancy in developing countries has always been the high death rate for infants and children. The World Bank studies suggest that as much as two thirds of the difference in life-spans between people in developed countries and those in developing ones can be traced to differences in survival rates for children under five.  It is here where the most improvement has come. According to UN estimates, significant regional drops in infant mortality - ranging from 25 percent to 60 percent and centering near 40 percent - appear to have taken place between the late 1950s and the late 1970s in northern Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Although sub-Saharan Africa’ s mortality trends cannot be quantified with confidence,  there is reason to believe that life expectancy has risen and infant  mortality has declined in that region as well. There is little doubt that population growth has accelerated in sub-Saharan Africa since the 1950s; in fact, sub-Saharan Africa is widely thought to have the highest rate of population growth of any major region in the world. Only a small portion of that acceleration is likely to have been caused by increases in fertility (and increases in fertility, insofar as they have occurred, may also imply improvements in health and nutrition).
    Mortality, of course, is not a perfect measure of nutritional change. Improved nutrition is only one of a number of forces that have been pushing down death rates in developing countries.  Others include the upgrading of hygiene and sanitation; the extension of public health services;  medical innovations;  improvements in education, communications, transportation, and, in some areas, civil order. Even  so, the extent to which improvements innutrition—both direct and indirect—have reduced mortality in developing countries has frequently been  underestimated. For example, Sri Lanka experienced an abrupt  jump in life expectancy shortly after the Second World War. Whereas this was long described as a "technical fix"—a triumph of DDT over the anopheles mosquito—years later researchers realized that abrupt and rapid drops in mortality had also taken place in Sri Lanka’ s highlands, or "dry zones", where malaria had never been a serious problem.  In both highlands and lowland regions health improved  in tandem with access to food.
The author holds that______.

选项 A、mortality rates in developing countries have been brought down by a number of forces
B、medical innovations are the only way to reduce mortality rates in developing countries
C、the upgrading of hygiene and sanitation has played a crucial role in reducing mortality rates in developing countries
D、improved nutrition is the only one factor that reduces mortality rates in developing countries

答案A

解析 文中第二段论述了降低死亡率的多种因素。
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