OK. Rats and heroes are not something that we would normally associate with each other - maybe unless the hero is doing something nasty to the rat. In this case though, the rats are DEFINATELY the heroes.
Combine a fantastic sense of smell, very light weight (handy not to set the landmines off, a big priority...) and a very low TCO (very cheap to feed, maintain and transport) with their other good points and you can see why they are perfect for the jobs that APOPO are training them to do.
Bright idea with an excellent aim and audience. Trained dogs and human deminers are obviously going to cost a lot more that the rats - having a much cheaper alternative will mean that third-world or poorer countries (which for some reason tend to have more landmines/tuberculosis in them) have a much better chance of getting those problems detected and then removed.
You can adopt a rat (and even name it!), which will help this laudable effort to get rid of landmines, help detect tuberculosis and any other jobs that can be thought up for these heroes...
HeroRATS are trained sniffer rats that detect explosives and diagnose disease. This unusual idea has been developed into a competitive technology by a group of Belgian and Tanzanian researchers and animal trainers under the umbrella organization called APOPO. APOPO was initiated in response to the global landmine problem. In the mid 90's it was well recognized that most mine clearance techniques in use were slow, expensive, and dependant on foreign expertise.
With their terrific sense of smell and trainability, rats could provide a cheaper, more efficient and locally available means to detect landmines. These would be HeroRATS.
Landmines hamper reconstruction and the delivery of aid, hold up the repatriation of refugees and displaced people, and deprive some of the poorest people of land and infrastructure, therefore hindering access to social and economic development. Africa is struck more by the landmine legacy than any other place on the planet. A trained HeroRAT can clear 100 m2 in 30 minutes, equivalent to two days work for a manual deminer.
HeroRATS also reliably detect pulmonary Tuberculosis (TB) in human sputum samples. Tuberculosis was the first pathogen addressed, as TB kills more youth and adults than any other single infectious disease in the world today. Currently, in 7 minutes one rat can evaluate 40 samples which is the equivalent of 2 days of microscopy work for a lab technician.
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