VOA慢速英語:When Animals Make People Sick

[ti:When Animals Make People Sick] [ar:Jim Tedder] [al:Agriculture Report] [00:00.00]This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report. [00:04.79]Researchers estimate that more than two billion people a year [00:09.98]get diseases spread by animals. [00:13.47]More than two million of them die. [00:16.71]Delia Grace is a veterinary epidemiologist [00:22.60]-- an expert in the spread of diseases involving animals. [00:26.99]She is also a food safety expert. [00:31.18]She works at the International Livestock Research Institute [00:35.66]in Nairobi, Kenya. [00:37.86]She explains that diseases transmitted [00:41.56]between animals and people are called zoonoses. [00:46.09]DELIA GRACE: "A majority of human diseases are actually zoonotic. [00:49.58]More than sixty percent of human diseases [00:51.82]are transmitted from other vertebrate animals. [00:55.06]Some of these diseases are pretty common. [00:57.65]Some of the food-borne diseases and also diseases [01:00.98]such as tuberculosis, leptospirosis are not uncommon. [01:04.67]Others are quite rare." [01:06.31]Delia Grace says there are many different infection pathways. [01:10.89]Probably the most common one is for people to get sick from food. [01:16.47]Other transmission pathways include direct contact with animals. [01:22.14]And some diseases can be transmitted through water or through the air. [01:28.62]DELIA GRACE: "Diseases like avian influenza or mad cow disease [01:31.60]have actually killed very few people. [01:33.70]But they are of interest because some of them have the potential [01:37.39]to kill a lot of people -- diseases like the Spanish flu [01:40.82]after the First World War or HIV/AIDS, [01:44.67]both of which were originally zoonoses." [01:46.67]Delia Grace is the lead author of a new report [01:50.05]called "Mapping of Poverty and Likely Zoonoses Hotspots." [01:56.23]She points out that poverty and disease are closely linked, [02:01.55]so preventing the transmission of animal diseases [02:05.65]could help reduce poverty. [02:08.44]The report, for Britain's Department for International Development, [02:13.68]lists places where the diseases are most common. [02:18.50]The report lists places where a disease has existed for a long time, [02:24.83]a so-called endemic zoonosis, as well as places with new threats. [02:31.80]DELIA GRACE: "So in terms of the hotspots of the zoonosis [02:35.04]which are there all the time -- not the new zoonosis, [02:37.92]but what we call the endemic zoonosis [02:40.06]-- we identified three countries [02:41.60]which bear the greatest burden of these diseases. [02:44.41]And those are India, Ethiopia and Nigeria. [02:47.84]But in terms of the new diseases [02:50.23]-- the diseases which haven't been there, [02:52.13]but are emerging -- the hotspots are very different. [02:54.67]They appear to be western United States and western Europe." [02:58.36]Delia Grace says things could get worse in the coming years [03:02.09]as meat production increases to feed a growing world population. [03:07.67]High production farms often raise animals close together. [03:12.51]Crowding can allow diseases to spread quickly. [03:17.05]Another concern is the use of antibiotics in food animals, [03:22.12]not only to prevent and treat diseases but to increase growth. [03:27.81]The report says an "incentive-based" system [03:31.90]to encourage safer methods of raising animals [03:35.98]could be more effective than increasing food inspections. [03:40.90]For example, small farmers could receive training [03:45.79]and other help that would lead to official certification [03:50.48]that their products are safe. [03:53.13]And that's the VOA Special English Agriculture Report. [03:58.06]I'm Jim Tedder.

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