Polish aid

Tuberculosis is one of the ten most frequent causes of death in Tanzania. This places Tanzania among the 30 countries with the highest levels of tuberculosis cases and deaths. According to the World Health Organisation, in 2018 142,000 Tanzanians went down with tuberculosis, that is 253 per 100,000 people. In European countries these rates are several times lower. For instance, in Poland in recent years there have been fewer than 6-8 thousand cases (around 15 per 100,000 people). In the European Union countries, the average is 10.7 cases per 100,000 people. In Poland, the tuberculosis incident rate exceeding 250 cases per 100,000 people (in other words similar to the current rate in Tanzania) was last recorded in the 1950s. Thanks to countrywide vaccination programmes, prevention, and quick diagnostics it was possible to curb tuberculosis infections. In Tanzania, in 2018 only 75,828 tuberculosis patients underwent treatment, while the remaining 47 per cent did not receive medical care. The health sector in Africa suffers from inadequate funds and lack of medicines, basic equipment, qualified staff, and even furniture. The nearest medical facility can be hundreds of kilometres away from the place where the infected person lives. And even if such a facility is not far away, it may happen that there is no equipment to diagnose tuberculosis. A quick and reliable diagnostics is the first step to effectively combat the disease.

One of organisations in Tanzania that try to tackle problems with detecting tuberculosis infections is APOPO. However, APOPO does not rely on specialised, complex equipment to carry out diagnostics. For this purpose it has deployed… rats. Widespread in Southern Africa, Giant African pouched rats (Cricetomys ansorgei) have a remarkable sense of smell and intelligence. With appropriate training, they can detect specific scents with great precision and speed. To detect tuberculosis, pouched rats test sputum samples from potentially ill people. The rats smell a series of holes in a glass chamber beneath which the sputum samples are placed. To indicate that a rat has detected tuberculosis, it keeps its nose in the hole or scratches the glass. The key advantage of using pouched rats to detect tuberculosis is the speed of the procedure – one trained rat can assess 40 samples in just seven minutes; a diagnostician working in a lab needs the whole day to do that. At the same time, according to scientists, the available lab methods of detecting tuberculosis, although largely effective, are far from perfect. Pouched rats, on the other hand, are more effective than the commonly used basic microscopic tests. Located on the premises of the Sokoine University of Agriculture in Morogoro in central Tanzania, the APOPO organisation has been training pouched rats to detect tuberculosis since 2007. On average, it takes about nine months to train a rat to detect specific smells. After that, pouched rats can work from four to five years before they retire. Since 2015, giant African pouched rats in Tanzania have assessed tens of thousands of samples each year. It is a quick and, most importantly, cheap method. According to APOPO, thanks to its programme, tuberculosis detection in Tanzania has increased by 40 per cent. The rats that were trained in Tanzania also help to detect tuberculosis in Mozambique, where tuberculosis detection has increased by 48 percent thanks to the animals.

Training pouched rats in Tanzania in tuberculosis diagnostics is possible also thanks to support from Polish Aid. Health protection is one of priorities of Polish development cooperation with African countries. In 2019, the Polish Embassy in Dar es Salaam in cooperation with APOPO implemented a project that helped to expand the programme to detect tuberculosis in Tanzania with the use of pouched rats and to provide the APOPO’s office with ecological and reliable energy source. Thanks to the project, further health facilities in the Dodoma and Morogoro regions were covered by the tuberculosis detection programme.

However, tuberculosis detection is not the only front that African pouched rats serve at. Called ”HeroRATs” by APOPO, the animals started their work at the organisation with… mine detection (also using their keen noses). Set up in 1997 by a Belgian Bart Weetjens, the organisation initially focused on training rats to sniff for landmines. The rats have to undergo a series of training and receive appropriate accreditation to carry out their tasks. The animals have already cleared some minefields in Mozambique, Angola, Palestine, and Cambodia. It is partly thanks to the pouched rats which were trained in Tanzania by APOPO that Mozambique was officially declared landmine-free in 2015. In Cambodia, where APOPO has been operating since 2014, Magawa the pouched rat received a medal in 2020 for bravery in detecting mines. The medal was awarded by the UK’s organisation PDSA that provides protection and care for animals, including those used in the police, the army and other services. The brave and wise rats are being trained for new tasks. They are to help Tanzanian services in detecting ivory and pangolin scales smuggling. These small but great heroes will have another important mission to carry out.