VOA标准英语2012--Groups Resisting Global Polio Vaccination Efforts

（单词翻译）

Groups Resisting Global Polio Vaccination¹ Efforts

Health officials in Pakistan say they are redoubling efforts to vaccinate² every child against polio after 198 new cases were reported in the country last year, the largest number anywhere in the world.

But an ongoing³ insurgency⁴ and the influx⁵ of millions of Pakistani and Afghan refugees make that difficult.

And there's public opposition⁶ tied to reports the CIA used a fake vaccination program to hunt down al-Qaeda leader Osama bin⁷ Laden⁸.

Carol Pandak manages the polio eradication⁹ program for the private group, Rotary¹⁰ International:

"We can stop polio, but we need the financial resources to finish the job and the accountability and advocacy on the political side in the remaining polio endemic countries so that the activities are carried out at a quality that can stop the transmission of the virus," said Pandak.

In northern Nigeria, public health officials have worked hard to counter false rumors¹¹ that the polio vaccine¹² contains birth-control drugs meant to suppress the country's Muslim population.

Even in the United States, there are anti-immunization groups that claim the vaccines¹³ can be unsafe for some people. Other critics, such as Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center, believe vaccine makers¹⁴ are promoting mass immunization solely¹⁵ to increase their profits.

"Certainly we have very powerful pharmaceutical¹⁶ corporations, multinational¹⁷ drug companies who are very interested in having as many doses of vaccines as possible, used by as many children all over the world as possible," Fisher said.

But Carol Pandak at Rotary International says too few people can recall how devastating¹⁸ polio can be. In one Nigerian village where leaders blocked immunizations, nine children fell sick with polio, leaving them partially¹⁹ paralyzed, their limbs deformed²⁰.

"I think we are almost a victim of our own success in this situation, because the parents don't see thousands and thousands of children paralyzed by polio," Pandak added. "So you don't see the reality of what the polio virus can do to children."

Anti-vaccination groups argue that some of the $9 billion spent so far on polio vaccinations²¹ could have been better used to improve sanitation²² conditions and child nutrition. But Pandak says that is another campaign. Right now, she says, a sustained commitment to mass vaccination could soon end polio forever.