2004-2-24
This is the VOA Special English Health Report.
One of the major health agencies
in the United States is the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. It is known as the C-D-C. "Prevention" was added to the
name later. The agency has many jobs. For example, it recently
provided information to the public about ricin. Some of that poison
had been found in a Senate office building in Washington. The C-D-C
advised people about ways to stay safe if they ever found ricin.
The C-D-C warns, advises and reports on health subjects from
around the world. For example, it is currently providing information
about avian influenza. The outbreak of bird flu in Asia has killed
more than twenty people in Thailand and Vietnam.
The agency also is advising people how to protect against cold
weather and poorly heated homes in winter. And the C-D-C just gave
Americans the newest estimate of how long they can expect to live.
In two-thousand-two, average life expectancy reached
seventy-seven-point-four years. But the C-D-C also reported an
increase in the rate of deaths among newborn babies that year. It
was the first increase in the United States since
nineteen-fifty-eight.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is an agency
within the Department of Health and Human Services. Its main offices
and laboratories are in Atlanta, Georgia.
Eight-thousand-five-hundred people work for the C-D-C. These include
doctors, nurses, scientists, engineers and others. They all have
some part in trying to learn how diseases start, and where and how
they spread.
C-D-C laboratories examine tissue, blood and other substances to
help identify diseases. For example, the C-D-C recently confirmed
the presence in Bangladesh of a viral infection similar to the Nipah
virus. This virus was first recognized in nineteen-ninety-nine in
Nipah, Malaysia. It was blamed for widespread cases of encephalitis,
a brain infection. More than one-hundred people died of the disease.
C-D-C experts are ready to travel anywhere in the world to help
deal with outbreaks of disease. The faster the cause is identified,
the faster health workers can take steps to contain and control it.
The C-D-C Web site offers information about how to prevent and
treat a number of sicknesses, and how to stay healthy. The address
is w-w-w dot c-d-c dot g-o-v.
This VOA Special English Health Report was written by Jerilyn
Watson.