Title:
Plan Aims to Fight Child Diarrhea in Developing
World
Description: This is
a VOA Special English Technology Report.
See text below
Text:
Diarrhea kills one and a half million children each
year one in five child deaths worldwide. The only
disease that kills more children under age five is
pneumonia.
Experts say diarrhea causes more child deaths than
AIDS, malaria and measles combined. New findings
show it also kills more than a million adolescents
and elderly people every year.
Therese Dooley is a senior adviser at UNICEF, the
United Nations Children's Fund. She says in addition
to the deaths, there are about two-point-five
billion cases of diarrhea among children every year.
But a new report says sixty percent of those in
developing countries do not get the recommended
treatment.
The report, appearing in the Lancet medical journal,
is from UNICEF and the World Health Organization. It
includes a seven-point plan for countries to use to
prevent and treat diarrhea. The condition causes
fluid loss and reduces the body's supply of zinc.
This mineral is needed for normal growth and
development.
For the past five years, UNICEF and the WHO have
recommended zinc supplements to treat diarrhea. They
also recommend fluid replacement solutions made from
what are called low-osmolarity oral rehydration
salts. Yet zinc supplements remain largely
unavailable in the developing world. And the fluid
replacement solutions can also be difficult to find.
A leading cause of diarrhea in children is the
rotavirus. Public health officials are now advised
to include the rotavirus vaccine in all national
immunization programs. But the vaccine is still not
available in many developing countries.
The report says new ways to expand the use of
treatments are now being developed. Proposals
include, for example, supplying treatment kits
through community health workers or special
campaigns.
Experts say children with diarrhea should continue
to eat, and babies should continue to breastfeed.
To help prevent diarrhea, the report suggests that
children receive both the rotavirus and measles
vaccines. It also calls for improving supplies of
clean water in developing countries.
Another prevention measure is hand washing with
soap.
Diarrhea can be easy to prevent. Campaigns to fight
childhood diarrhea had some success during the
nineteen seventies and eighties. The authors of the
report hope this new plan will help return the issue
to worldwide importance.
And that's the VOA Special English Development
Report.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
