去听写专区一展身手

英语学习论坛的“听力练习区”正式与大家见面啦。欢迎大家来这里练习听力，交流经验，共同进步。

本练习区的音频文件选自英语点津的“听中国日报”、“VOA常速”、“流行金曲”及“名人演讲”等栏目，题材丰富，难度各异，适合不同阶段的英语学习者。

英语点津会定期发布音频材料，大家可以在跟帖中贴出自己听写出的音频文字稿。每个音频材料的标准文字稿会在帖子发布两天后公布。

进入该文章的听写练习页面

This is the VOA Special English Development Report.

A new study says the leading cause of disability in older people in low and middle income countries is dementia. The researchers disagree with the World Health Organization which says blindness and other vision problems are the leading cause.

Dementia is a loss of intellectual ability that affects memory, learning, attention, thinking and language skills. People with dementia may forget family members or not know what day it is. Sometimes they become angry or sad, hear voices, or see things that are not there.

Renata Sousa from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London and other researchers wrote the new report. Their study looked at the causes of disability among 15,000 people age 65 or older in seven countries. The countries were China, India, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Mexico and Peru.

The team found that dementia was the largest cause of disability in the elderly in areas other than rural India and Venezuela. Other major causes were stroke, loss of use of arms or legs, arthritis, depression, eyesight problems and gastrointestinal problems.

In low and middle income countries, heart disease and cancer get much of the attention given to chronic diseases. The researchers say increased importance should be given to chronic diseases of the brain and mind. As populations age, societies will have to deal with more and more cases of dementia.

The study says the elderly are nine percent of the total population of low and middle income countries today. But their numbers are growing quickly. They are expected to reach 20 percent of the total population by the middle of the century.

The study appeared in the Lancet medical journal which published a special issue on disability. A separate study of 18 low and middle income countries dealt with children.

It found that in almost half the countries, children who were not breastfed were much more likely to have a disability than those who were. The same was true of those who did not receive vitamin A supplements and those who were underweight.

Children who did not take part in early learning activities or attend school were also more likely to be disabled than those who did.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States and UNICEF did the study.

And that's the VOA Special English Development Report, written by June Simms. I'm Steve Ember.

dementia: a state of serious emotional and mental deterioration, of organic or functional origin 痴呆

gastrointestinal: of or relating to the stomach and intestines 胃肠的

（来源：VOA 编辑：陈丹妮）