【正确答案】
C
【答案解析】
[听力原文]<1>-<5>
Over the past two weeks the BBC
World Service has been running an AIDS season and we've heard many aspects of
the illness but today we want to get a sense of your personal contribution and
whether you think that you're winning the battle. So I want to start by asking
you about the enemy. When did you first realize what a serious enemy you were up
against with AIDS?
Annan: I think it was when I discussed the issue with the
World Health Organization and the UNAIDS and looked at the figures and the
statistics and the devastation it was causing in many African countries and the
attitude of the leaders. We needed leadership. We needed leadership at all
levels. But it was most important to get the Presidents and the Prime Ministers
speaking up and that was not happening and I thought we should do whatever we
can to raise awareness and to get them involved.
BBC: And is your sense of
the problem, is it all from talking to leaders and talking to officials or have
you been out there on the ground talking to sufferers?
Annan: I've been out
there on the ground talking to sufferers, in fact my wife and I were in Lima
just last week and we had a rather painful experience with a group of women who
had set themselves up to help AIDS sufferers. They had with them a nine years
old. The mother and the father had died of AIDS. She was left with her
grandmother who was illiterate and didn't know what to do. When we met them she
was getting no assistance at all so I called my UNDP colleague there, the
resident coordinator, and I said "can't we do something for this girl?" And of
course he's going to try and see if PAHO, the WHO's regional organization can
help her. But we were both quite struck, we knew this was happening but we
hadn't expected - I've seen the situation in parts of Africa where I've visited
AIDS patients in villages where you see grandmother and lots of grandchildren,
no mother, no father and yet you go to a place like Mozambique, a small clinic
which is doing a lot, which is following pregnant women, ensuring that the
children are born free of AIDS and following the mother to try and protect her
so that they can have their mother as well and they do not become one of tile 14
million plus orphans. And I've also lost some very close friends, including
people who worked here in the UN and that also hits you.
BBC: So you've
watched individuals struggle through the course of the illness?
Annan:
Exactly, so for me it's not statistics, it's not statistics. I've seen the human
suffering and the pain and what is even more difficult is when you see somebody
lying there dying who knows that there's medication and medicine somewhere else
in the world that can save her but she can't have it because she's poor and
lives in a poor country. Where is our common humanity? How do you explain it to
her that in certain parts of the world AIDS is a disease that can be treated and
one can live with and function but in her particular situation it's a death
sentence. It's a tough one.
BBC: And how do you explain it?
Annan: You try
to explain to them about what you are trying to do and what you are trying to
get the governments to do to increase assistance, not only in areas of
treatment, prevention and education and getting the youth and the women's
organizations involved, it may not necessarily help her particular situation but
at least its good for her to know that action is contemplated, action is on the
way, if it will not save her it will save others, that in itself is consoling
but its not good enough. This is why I'm rather pleased with Dr. Lee's approach
of trying to get the AIDS medication to three million people in five years.
Today we have three hundred thousand people on the medication.
BBC: This is
the World Health Organization initiative?
Annan: Yes.
BBC: We'll talk
about that in a moment but first I want to get a sense of how you feel when
you're faced with these people asking you "why can't I have the drug?"
Annan:
It is extremely difficult and I can tell you I've really tried very hard. You
may know that I've had several meetings with the chairmen of the seven top
pharmaceutical companies to press for reduction in the prices of these
medications, to get across to them that whilst I respect and support
intellectual property, it is extremely difficult not to make the medication
accessible to the poor and that we need to be able to balance - and they have
reduced some of the prices and in some cases like neverapine in some countries
they're giving them away free.
BBC: This is the drug for mother-to-child
transmission for pregnant mothers?
Annan: Exactly, which I consider the
cruellest of all transmissions. So you press and push and try and get as much as
you can and governments are becoming engaged, but for the person who is lying
there, in some cases like the child I mentioned in Lima, you are able to get
them some assistance but it doesn't always happen that way, with others you
cannot immediately get them assistance.
BBC: And does that make you feel
angry or does it make you feel distressed?
Annan: Both. I feel angry, I feel
distressed, I feel helpless and I feel that to live in a world where we have the
means, we have the resources to be able to help all these patients, what is
lacking is a political will. How do you generate that political will to ensure
that assistance reaches them and of course with somebody like myself who tries
to speak for the poor and the voiceless you sort of feel you're failing, you're
not getting enough done and you walk away a bit depleted and upset, really upset
if not depressed.
BBC: What more can you do though, when you ask yourself
what more can I do, what answers do you come up with? Annan: I think we should
continue our efforts to mobilize the societies to play a role. We should get the
leaders to speak out against discrimination, the stigma that is attached to it.
We need resources, we need resources to assist these people. We are operating at
a relatively low level. We estimate that by 2005 we will need ten billion
dollars worldwide per annum to fight the disease. Today I'm trying to see if we
can get three billion a year for the next five years going into the global fund.
1 would want to see one billion dollars from the European Union per year for the
next five years, one billion dollars from the United States government and one
billion from other sources. But multi-year commitment over the next five years
and of course the rest of the resources will have to come from elsewhere.