高中二年级英语(人教版)上册 Unit 7 Reading

　　BORN DYING

　　Xiaohua is 12 and lives in a province in South China. She is a happy girl who smiles a lot and likes to talk to her friends after school. People who see Xiaohua would never guess that she is one of millions of children in the world living and dying with AIDS.

　　AIDS is a disease that breaks down the body's immune system and leaves a person defenceless against infections and illnesses. Most people who have AIDS manage to survive only a few years after they get the disease. For some, medicine can help keep them alive, but the treatment is expensive and does not cure them.

　　People get AIDS after having been infected with HIV. HIV spreads through blood and other body liquids. People transmit HIV by having unprotected sex, by receiving infected blood transfusions or, as in Xiaohua's case, through birth. Xiaohua's mother contracted HIV when she was 28, and she died of AIDS only three years after Xiaohua was born. Xiaohua's mother did not know that she had AIDS until Xiaohua was born. Xiaohua's father, who also has AIDS, takes care of her, but Xiaohua misses her mother. "I wish I could remember more about my mum," Xiaohua says, "I wish that she were here with me and that we weren't sick."

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