Terrestrial mines and tuberculosis are not up to the Tanzanian “hero rats” sniffing danger and illness

Morogoro, Tanzania – A man is motionless, sprawled in the rubble of a simulated earthquake, as an unlikely rescuer approaches: a rat with a backpack. Witting-on mustaches, the rat breaks garbage, overturned furniture and dispersed clothes to find it and press your package, alerting the researchers above.

Then a resounding click. A survivor was found. Research in Morogoro in the mountains of Uluguru in Tanzania is over and the rat rushes from the abandoned building to be rewarded by a banana. A successful mission is complete for this African giant pocket rat formed for research and rescue operations.

“Their smell is incredible,” said Fabrizio Dell’anna, an animal behaviorist in Apopo, a non -governmental organization based in Tanzania that forms rats for rescue applications. “These rats are capable of detecting explosives, tuberculosis – even tiny quantities of bacteria – and in this project, they are able to identify and indicate humans correctly.”

In a nearby field, more and more rats are walking on leashes held between managers, stimulating a grid filled with terrestrial mines as part of an Apopo initiative, which operates alongside the University of Agriculture in Sokoine. When they stop, this indicates that the explosives are below. These rats are preparing for their next deployment, perhaps Angola or Cambodia, where Apopo has helped erase more than 50,000 terrestrial mines since 2014.

From the detection of terrestrial mines to sniff tuberculosis, these “hero rats” have become improbable and sometimes unrecognized, first-line responders in Tanzania and beyond.

For decades, Apopo formed these “hero rats”, which have one of the most sensitive noses of the animal kingdom. Since 2003, rats have found terrestrial mines and, more recently, have been activated to wildlife survivors and tank earthquakes.

Rats are starting to train shortly after birth for specific missions and, with a lifespan of rodents longer than the average of almost a decade, can spend years doing their work. The cost of training each rat manages around 6,000 euros ($ 6,990).

Everything is done with a classic packaging and a positive strengthening, explained Dell’a, which oversees the research and rescue program. The first cohort of this group of specialized rats is already in Türkiye with a research and rescue organization of partners.

While rats focused on explosives or survivors buried in rubble gets all glory, it is a group of rats inside a laboratory which are undoubtedly the most impactful rescuers. These are not typical laboratory rats, but rather, as their supporters support it, one of the most effective detectors in the world of tuberculosis.

“Every day, because many people die from tuberculosis only from terrestrial mines in an entire year,” said Christophe Cox, CEO of Apopo. “It’s more spectacular to be on the mines field … but for tuberculosis … in terms of social impact, it’s great.”

Tuberculosis is an old respiratory disease that continues to compensate for centuries of research and treatment. The World Health Organization declared last October in its latest tuberculosis report that the disease had resurfaced as the best killer of infectious diseases, with 1.25 million dead and 8.2 million infections in 2023.

In sub-Saharan Africa, only about half of the patients with tuberculosis receive a diagnosis, according to a study carried out by researchers in the United Kingdom and the Gambia published at the National Library of Medicine, which makes them likely to disseminate the disease. Tanzania is struggling with one of the highest world burdens of tuberculosis, according to WHO.

Apopo extended to the detection of tuberculosis in 2007 and its rats were deployed in Tanzania, Ethiopia and Mozambique. The group works with 80 hospitals in Tanzania, collecting samples daily and bringing them to laboratory rats.

With their sensitive nose, rats sniff patient spitting samples, looking for positive tuberculosis cases which had been marked as negative. Research suggests that rats take up six volatile organic compounds unique in positive tuberculosis samples, Cox said.

False negatives remain a persistent problem in the detection and suppression of tuberculosis because each infected person can spread the disease to 10 to 15 additional people each year.

“The advantages of rats use are important,” said Felista Stanesloaus, a doctor in a clinic of tuberculosis in Morogoro. “They help us detect cases that could otherwise be missed, which prevents people from spreading infections without knowing it.”

Tuberculosis detection has made significant progress in recent years, in particular using artificial intelligence tools together with pulmonary analyzes. However, many areas that are most overwhelmed by tuberculosis, such as rural villages or low -income urban communities, do not have access to these tools.

Although the use of molecular detection devices, such as that called Genexpert, has become more widespread, a clinic can only have one of these devices and it can take two hours to treat a sample. The overloaded clinics are turned to the secular technique of microscopy, or the study of expectorations under a microscope, both fallible and which takes time.

“A human error can lead to a person who says he is without illness when he is not,” said Stanesloaus. “The use of rats is a very effective initiative.”

Apopo rats can scan 100 samples in 20 minutes, and since the creation of the program, rats have been able to identify more than 30,000 patients who had been returned to their homes with a clean health ticket but which actually transported tuberculosis, said Cox. The NGO is able to do with a laboratory what 55 hospitals do in one day, he adds.

However, using living animals instead of medical devices poses challenges, especially with regard to the scale. Samples must be subjected directly to a laboratory with enough rats formed to carry out the detection, with a few samples brought to Morogoro by motorcycle every day. Operations are the most effective in dense urban centers, such as Dar es Salaam, said Cox.

The more existential challenge for these “hero rats” comes from regulators and a broader health community which doubts this unconventional method of detecting disease.

Apopo rats are not classified as main diagnostic tools by WHO. Instead, they are a second line of defense. All the positive samples detected by rats must be confirmed by human microscopy in apopo laboratories before treatment.

“It’s a big challenge,” said Cox. “Not being recognized by WHO means that consumer funding for tuberculosis … never reaches us.”

COX abandoned the prospect of obtaining the approval of the WHO, although Apopo faced the pressure of donors to go through this process, which would be extended and rigorous without any guarantee of success.

Regulators can also contest the APOPO method to focus on the search for each positive case possible at the cost of more potential false positives.

APOPO relies on the indication of a single rat to carry out a more in -depth investigation into a possible positive case, while higher specificity standards may require several rats to report a sample.

Cox defends this approach.

“Our choice was to go for the latter patient – to opt for social impact,” said Cox.

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