本文音频及原文摘自杂志The Economist 2016年第23期，Science and Technology版块。

An update on AIDS

The battle against the human immunodeficiency virus continues

Jun 4th 2016

THE latest dispatch[1] from the war on HIV, the “Global AIDS Update 2016”, just published by UNAIDS[2], the UN agency responsible for combating the virus, brings qualified good news. Last year, it estimates, there were 1.1m AIDS-related deaths, down from a peak of 2m in 2005 and a figure of 1.2m in 2014. Last year also saw 2.1m new infections[感染], down from a peak of 3.4m in 1998 but up from 2014’s estimate of 2.0m.

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[1]dispatch：a newspaper report sent by someone in a foreign country, often communicating war news, or an official report, often on a military matter （常指驻外记者发来的军事方面的）新闻报道，电讯

In her latest dispatch, Clare Duggan, our war correspondent, reported an increase in fighting.

我们的战地记者克莱尔‧达根在其最新报道中说战事正在加剧。

[V]to send something, especially goods or a message, somewhere for a particular purpose 发送，派送

Two loads of woollen cloth were dispatched to the factory on December 12th.

12月12日两车毛料被发到工厂。

[2]UNAIDS:联合国艾滋病规划署

The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS

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By the end of 2015 some 17m people were taking anti-retroviral[抗逆转录病毒的] (ARV) drugs—2m more than the target number for that year, set by the UN in 2011. This accounts for the falling death rate. Some hoped the drug roll-out[新产品推出] might also lead to an increased fall-off in the rate of new infections. That hope was based on the idea, experimentally demonstrated at small scale among cohabiting couples[同居男女], that taking ARVs makes an infected individual less likely to pass the virus on. There is, though, no sign of such an acceleration in the downward trend of new infections. This year’s uptick aside, it has remained fairly steady since the turn of the century, despite the fraction of infected people on ARVs having risen from 3% in 2000 to 46% in 2015.

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The next UN target is that, by 2020, 90% of those infected should have been diagnosed[诊断] and know their status, 90% of those so diagnosed should be on ARVs, and 90% of those on ARVs should have suppressed[抑制;镇压;废止] viral loads[病毒载量;血中带病毒量]. That is ambitious, but history suggests those in the field will rise to the challenge[接受挑战,奋起应付挑战].

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以上言论不代表本人立场。

原文摘自The economist，仅外语学习之用。

其中生词解释来源于Cambridge Dictionaries

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