Trained Rats Sniff out TB, Land Mines in Tanzania

[eppur_se_muova]

September 5, 2007––Morogoro, Tanzania––Trained sniffer rats could be the new weapon in the battle against the quickly rising number of tuberculosis (TB) patients that go undiagnosed each year in Africa.

Nineteen African pouched rats have been bred and trained in the past three years to detect and diagnose TB, with funding from a Development Marketplace (DM) grant. The unusual idea is being developed into what could be one of modern times’ most useful medical technologies by APOPO, a group of Belgian and Tanzanian researchers and animal trainers.
The approach is very simple: rats sniff a series of holes, under which human sputum samples are lined up for evaluation, and pinpoint the samples that contain TB bacteria.
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Rats that Sniff out Landmines

Weetjens, a successful DM project team leader who participated in this year’s global competition as a juror, first began working with rats in 1998, training a couple of hundred of them to sniff and detect unexploded landmines. With a maximum weight of 6 pounds, the animals are too light to set off land mines.

The landmine rats—called HeroRATS—are now accredited according to International Mine Detection Standards, just like mine detection dogs. With a small staff in Mozambique and 23 HeroRATS, APOPO has cleared 100 acres of mines.
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more: http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/AFRICAEXT/TANZANIAEXTN/0,,contentMDK:21462478~menuPK:287354~pagePK:2865066~piPK:2865079~theSitePK:258799,00.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_rat




Not exactly LBN, but I felt it deserved wider recognition. The (now hackneyed) phrase, "thinking outside of the box", was originally invented to describe this kind of enterprise.

[rocktivity]

1. Well, I remember a story about a dog who'd lick a spot on its owner's leg

which turned out to be cancerous...so rats might actually turn out to be good for something!

:headbang:
rocktivity