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  3. On Monday the United Nations Security Council, for the first time in its history, will convene to discuss actions on a health is

On Monday the United Nations Security Council, for the first time in its history, will convene to discuss actions on a health is

admin2009-06-24  79
问题     On Monday the United Nations Security Council, for the first time in its history, will convene to discuss actions on a health issue. The health issue in question is the spread of the HIV virus. Since AIDS, the disease to which the virus leads, is killing far more people than war, it richly deserves the Security Council’s attention. The question is what to do about it.
    The first answer is to resist the temptation to place excessive hope in the wonder drugs that have cut mortality from AIDS in rich countries. These drugs cost around $20,000 per person per year. Many of the poor countries that bear the brunt of AIDS have annual health budgets of less than $20 per person.
    There have been welcome efforts to reduce the cost of treatment. Last year the pharmaceutical industry allowed firms in South Africa to distribute cheaper copies of their products. But even if the cost of treatment could be radically reduced, it would remain impractical in much of the developing world. Anti-HIV drugs need to be administered with a precision that rudimentary health infrastructures cannot aspire to.
    The second answer is to invest in the development of a cheap, easily-delivered vaccine—but not to expect a quick victory. Even if a vaccine were discovered tomorrow, its efficacy could not be known until it was tested, and tests involve monitoring large groups of people over extended periods. There are plans afoot for the world’s eight leading countries to promise $500 million each toward the future cost of delivering a vaccine to the poor world. This would give the drug companies a powerful incentive to come up with one. But that excellent scheme cannot save the millions likely to become infected over the next half-decade. In sub-Saharan Africa, 10 people are infected every minute.
    Since science is unlikely to provide a silver bullet in the medium term, there is no option but to change human behavior. That sounds like a hopeless task. There have been calls for safe sex in the developing world for more than a decade, and yet the epidemic has progressed monstrously. But changing behavior is not in fact impossible.
    The countries that have tried it seriously have managed. Thailand, for example, has succeeded in getting prostitutes to insist on condoms. Senegal has kept the incidence of HIV infection below 2 percent. Uganda’s education campaign, focusing both on values and on practical information, has persuaded its youth to delay the first sexual experience by an average of two years; the infection rate among pregnant women in towns fell from 37 percent to around 15 percent during the 1990s.
    Other developing countries need to follow this example.
选项 A、in rich countries anti-AIDS drugs can work wonderfully.
B、in rich countries people put too much hope in anti-AIDS drugs.
C、poor countries cannot afford the highly efficient anti-AIDS drugs.
D、poor countries cannot copy the way rich countries cope with AIDS.
答案D
解析
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