There are some serious threats to the children’s health. The largest killer of children under age five is pneumonia(肺炎). This lung infection kills about two million children each year, mostly in developing countries.
In developed countries, most pneumonia cases are caused by viruses. But in the developing world, about sixty percent are caused by bacteria. These cases can be treated with antibiotic drugs(抗生素).
The World Health Organization currently says children with severe pneumonia should be admitted to a hospital and given injectable antibiotics. But many poor families do not have the money for a hospital or live too far away.
Now, new research could lead to a change in that advice. A study in Pakistan found that children with severe pneumonia can recover fully at home taking antibiotics by mouth. The study is in the Lancet medical journal.
The research involved two thousand children between three and five years old. Half received intravenous(静脉) antibiotics during a forty-eight-hour hospital stay. The others were sent home to take antibiotics for five days.
The treatment failed in eighty-seven children in the hospitalized group and seventy-seven in the home group. These children were then given another therapy.
During the study, five children died, four of them in the hospital group.
W.H.O. medical officer Shamim Qazi says the new findings will help children, families and hospitals. Children may get other infections in a hospital. Many hospitals are already overcrowded. And treatment at home would be less costly.
The study confirmed the findings of three other studies in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America. These showed that in hospitals, oral antibiotics were just as effective as injectable antibiotics in treating severe pneumonia in children.
A few cases are so severe they will still need hospital care. But Doctor Qazi says the W.H.O will be updating its guidelines this year with the new evidence. The W.H.O, of course, will be devoted to studying other killers to children all the time as well.
1．Why do some children cannot be sent to hospital and given inject able antibiotics?
A．Because parents don’t want to spend much money on them.
B．Because their disease is not serious enough.
C．Because they live far away from hospitals.
D．Because they don’t want to receive intravenous antibiotics.
2．Of all the children who received intravenous antibiotics in the research, children died.
A．0.4% B．0.2% C．0.25% D．0.5%
3．The writer mainly wants to tell us .
A．home treatments work well on children with severs pneumonia
B．the largest killer of children under age five is pneumonia
C．what the advantage of treating pneumonia staying at home is
D．how the research about pneumonia was carried out
4．Suppose the passage hasn’t ended, what might be most possibly talked about in the following part?
A．The detailed information about the W.H.O’s updating its guidelines.
B．The way to solve the problem that some hospitals are overcrowded.
C．Another threat to children’s health, which W.H.O will deal with.
D．The findings of three other studies in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America