Dogs could help detect malaria 狗能從襪子裡 “聞” 出人是否患有瘧疾

本集內容

Dogs could help detect malaria 狗能從襪子裡 “聞” 出人是否患有瘧疾

學習要點

有關 “dogs 狗” 的詞匯

Dogs could help detect malaria 狗能從襪子裡 “聞” 出人是否患有瘧疾

邊看邊答

When the children have malaria, how effective are the dogs at detecting it?

文字稿

They’re our four-legged friends, but could they help fight one of our worst enemies? Malaria infects more than two hundred million people every year. But now dogs are on the scent.

狗是我們的四條腿朋友，但它們能幫助對抗我們最大的一個敵人嗎？每年有兩億多人感染瘧疾。而現在，狗嗅出瞭該病的蛛絲馬跡。

Socks from children in the Gambia were sent to the Medical Detection Dogs charity here in Milton Keynes. It’s taken training, but these pooches get it right 70% of the time if the children have malaria. But if the children were disease free, the dogs got it wrong 10% of the time.

岡比亞兒童穿過的襪子被送至這傢位於英國米爾頓凱恩斯的慈善機構 “醫療檢測犬”。雖然需要經受訓練，但如果孩子們患有瘧疾，這些狗狗判斷正確的概率是70%。但如果孩子們沒有患病，這些狗判斷錯誤的概率則是10%。

It’s still early stages but the study shows dogs have potential.

雖然該研究仍處於早期階段，但它表明狗有這方面的潛力。

Chelci Squires, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
The most important thing with this is that it is much faster than current, existing, rapid diagnostic tests which can take up to 20 minutes and actually require a fully trained professional to do. Whereas this – if we had the Medical Detection Dogs going round a community, it will allow the whole community to be surveyed in a very short space of time.

切爾茜·斯奎爾斯倫敦衛生與熱帶醫學院
“最重要的是，這種方式比現有的快速診斷測試要快得多，測試需要二十分鐘，而且還需要一位受過全面培訓的專業人士來完成。然而，如果我們帶著醫療檢測犬到社區裡轉一圈，就可以在很短的時間內查完整個社區的情況。”

The hope is dogs could work at airports to sniff out passengers with malaria to stop the disease spreading. But there’s still a long way to go before dogs can join the fight.

人們希望狗能夠在機場工作，嗅出感染瘧疾的乘客，從而阻止疾病的傳播。但要讓狗加入與疾病的鬥爭之前，還有很長的道路要走。

The researchers will need to improve the dogs’ accuracy, test them on people rather than socks and investigate whether the animals can sniff out different strains of malaria.

這些研究人員需要提高狗檢測的準確率，讓它們在人身上，而不是在襪子上測試，並研究這種動物能否聞出不同種類的瘧疾。

詞匯

four-legged friends 四條腿的朋友，對狗的愛稱

on the scent （在調查中）獲得線索

pooches 狗

sniff out 發現（人或事物）

你知道嗎？

A dog’s sense of smell is estimated to be ten thousand to one hundred thousand times as good as ours. While we have only six million smell receptors in our noses, dogs have up to three hundred million.

據估算，狗的嗅覺比人類的嗅覺要敏銳一萬至十萬倍。我們的鼻子裡隻有六百萬個嗅覺感受器，而狗的嗅覺感受器卻多達三億個。