We often associate rats as being scourges of society – pests that are always not welcome inside our homes, but science has found a way for them to contribute something to mankind that we might someday appreciate.
What we would have thought as disease carrying vermin – giant rates are now being used in East African prisons to help determine people who may be positive with tuberculosis and have so far been highly successful in doing so.
This revolutionary detection system uses the rats’ heightened sense of smell to sniff out disease, according to a Belgian non-government organization APOPO, who is currently taking the lead in this initiative having some 50 fully trained African giant pouched rats.
The rats were trained for nine months in the group’s headquarters in Morogoro, Tanzania and can sniff through 100 sputum samples in 20 minutes, which would take up to two days for the conventional methods.
The testing process poses no harm or danger to the rats as the phlegm samples are placed in a heated autoclave to kill potential pathogens that could pose any risk or harm to the rats or their handlers, where the samples are lined up and the rats are made to do their work in sniffing the samples.
The slides where the rats are found to hover over for more than three seconds are the ones suspected with tuberculosis and are sent to the laboratory for further analysis.
Laboratory technicians claimed that the rat tests are extremely accurate and APOPO confirms that accuracy rating is at 100 percent.
The rats however, could not determine normal or drug-resistant strains and would need to have the samples turned over to the laboratory for this.
APOPO recently reported that they have so far screened some 344,919 samples for tuberculosis and were able to treat 39.920 cases.
APOPO US Director Charlie Richter, said that they believe this TB detection technology will be a good alternative to speed up mass screenings, as well as help save health programs from millions of dollars in annual mass screening processes.
“We aim to expand the program to all prisons, shantytowns and factories in high TB-burden countries, as well as with high risk groups who have HIV/ AIDS, thus improve and save lives around the world at a low cost,” Richter said.
Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported that one third of the world’s population is positive for tuberculosis and is a leading cause of deaths for persons with HIV.
Image Credit: Maarten Boersema/APOPO’s HeroRATs
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