OET Gaps 1

Gaps is probably the most effective way to improve your listening scores. Listen to the audio multiple times and fill the blanks with the exact word you hear in the audio. For answers, contact us. Answers are free.

You hear an interview with a bioengineer called Mark Kendall, who’s developed a new method of administering vaccinations called a nanopatch. 

Today I’m with biomedical engineer Mark Kendall, who’s developed a new technology called a nanopatch for delivering vaccinations. Mark, why is this new innovation necessary?

The needle and syringe method is more than (1) _____________ years old. It has made a huge contribution to increasing (2) __________________. But we can still do better. The needle itself causes all sorts of problems. It’s estimated that up to (3) ________________ of patients in Australia have a phobia of needles and don’t get vaccinated against deadly diseases. This means that herd immunity is lowered and people are more (4) ________________ to fatal or life changing diseases. Not only that, but infections caused by needles are thought to contribute to as many as 1.3 million deaths per year worldwide. 

So what exactly is the (5) ________________ and why does it work so well? 

It’s a very small patch and it weighs very little. Each one has approximately 20,000 little points, or (6) ________________, as we call them on it. It’s invisible to the naked eye and covered and sealed with a powder form of the vaccine. It’s applied using a (7) ________________ spring-operated device, which releases the vaccine less than a minute after it breaks through the (8) ________________ outer layer of skin and contacts the moisture within it. Afterwards, the patch can be (9) ________________. It’s very effective because the skin contains huge quantities of immune cells. A needle (10) ________________ muscle, which contains very few.

Could you outline the main benefits? 

Well, the main one is improved immune responses. Vaccines work by introducing an (11) ________________ into the body. This is a safe kind of germ that makes our body think it needs to deliver an (12) ________________. So it learns and remembers how to cope with (13) ________________. When the real threat, in other words, a disease, arrives, the body can deal with it and (14) ________________ the infection. Certain layers of the skin are jammed full of immune cells and the nanopatch is able to reach thousands and thousands of them within a (15) ________________ area. When my team tested responses to the flu vaccine, they found that a nanopatch required a (16) ________________ of the actual vaccine for it to be effective. 

And what impact would that have in terms of global health? 

Well, if we can take a vaccine that’s currently $10 down to $0.10, it would be a real game changer for the developing world, simply because it could significantly decrease (17) __________________________ and be delivered on a far larger scale.

It also means that we may be able to develop vaccines which protect against more (18) _________________ infections. When we consider the big three – HIV, malaria and (19) ____________________, which cause more than 7 million deaths per year, there are currently no effective vaccinations for any of them. I assume that (20) __________________________ must make transporting nanopatches easier. I mean, they must be far easier to transport than a needle and syringe. Ah, yes, of course. It’s far easier to carry hundreds or thousands of (21) _______, lightweight nanopatches at a time than it is to transport needles or syringes. A car, bike or (22) _________ isn’t always necessary to manage the (23) ____________. This means we can deliver vaccines far more easily to people in (24) __________________, and these people often slip through the (25) ________________. But it’s not only the size.

The requirement to keep a needle and syringe vaccine (26) __________________ all the way through from production to when it’s administered, is known as the (27) __________________. And as you can imagine, it presents huge (28) ____________________ challenges in certain parts of the world. If the vaccine is too cold or too (29) _______________, it breaks down and is unusable. It’s estimated that as many as half the vaccines in Africa aren’t working properly due to a (30) ________________ in this system. Because the nanopatch is dry, rather than being a liquid, the cold chain isn’t necessary. 

Why did you decide to trial the nanopatch in Papua New guinea? 

Well, (31) __________________________ struggles with a lot of the key obstacles to vaccination and reflects the medical and climatic conditions of much of the developing world. There’s the logistics. For example, Papua New guinea has only 800 suitable (32) ____________________, and many of these are old, in disrepair, or in the wrong locations. Not only that, but the country has unstable (33) _____________, which makes refrigeration even more difficult. But our main reason for (34) __________________ the nanopatch there was that the country has the highest (35) _________________ in the world of young women with the human papillomavirus, or (36) __________, as it’s known. This is one of the leading causes of cervical cancer. Yet the vaccine is unavailable because it’s too (37) ____________.