翻译题 2.The Millennium Development Goals call for a dramatic reduction in poverty and marked improvements in the health of the poor. Meeting these goals is feasible but far from assured. Success in achieving the MDGs will require a seriousness of purpose, a political resolve in countries, and an adequate flow of resources from high-income to low income countries on a sustained and well-targeted basis.
The importance of the MDGs in health is, in one sense, self-evident. Improving the health and longevity of the poor is an end in itself, a fundamental goal of economic development. But it is also a means to achieving the other development goals relating to poverty reduction. The linkages of health to poverty reduction and to long-term economic growth are powerful, much stronger than is generally understood. The burden of disease in some low-income regions, especially sub-Saharan Africa, stands as a stark barrier to economic growth and therefore must be addressed frontally and centrally in comprehensive development strategy. The AIDS pandemic represents a unique challenge of unprecedented urgency and intensity. This single epidemic can undermine Africa' s development over the next generation, and may cause tens of millions of deaths in India, China, and other developing countries unless addressed by greatly increased efforts.
The feasibility of meeting the MDGs in the low-income countries is widely misjudged. On the one side of the debate are those who believe that the health goals will take care of themselves, as a fairly automatic by-product of economic growth. With the mortality rates of children under 5 in the least-developed countries standing at 159 per 1,000 births, compared with 6 per 1,000 births in the high-income countries, they take the view that it' s just a matter of time before the mortality rates in the low-income world will converge with those of the rich countries. This is false for two reasons.