Every untreated Tuberculosis patient can infect a dozen other people per year. The need for faster TB diagnosis in overpopulated high burden cities is paramount. APOPO is working towards eradicating TB in Sub-Saharan Africa by training locally available rats to evaluate sputum samples more swiftly and efficiently. One rat can evaluate in ten minutes more samples than a lab technician can do in one day.
It takes about 9 months to fully train a Tuberculosis detection rat. Once it is trained, it can screen thousands of patients every month. The research and development in this novel diagnostic approach seeks to curb the spread of this deadly disease.
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APOPO's Tuberculosis detection rats screen yearly tens of thousands of sputum samples collected from TB clinics in Dar es Salaam. As a result, many TB patients which were first diagnosed as negative are now identified and can be cured.
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Tuberculosis was declared a national emergency in Mozambique in March 2006 and is one of the focus programs of the country’s Ministry of Health. APOPO’s TB detection operations in Maputo will help identify the maximum number of TB patients in the shortest possible time, to support the Mozambican National TB Control Program which identifies as priorities the improvement of diagnosis and treatment success rates.
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The best way to stop the spread of TB is to not only disseminate information on the symptoms and consequences of the disease but also come up with ways to detect patients more quickly and effectively.
Discover a multitude of different ways you can support APOPO and the HeroRATs' work in communities affected by landmines and tuberculosis.
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