Overview

• APOPO trains African giant pouched rats to detect explosives, sniff out tuberculosis and locate survivors, with the first search‑and‑rescue cohort already working in Turkey with a partner organization.
• In laboratory screening, the rats process about 100 sputum samples in 20 minutes and have uncovered more than 30,000 TB cases that clinics initially missed across operations in Tanzania, Ethiopia and Mozambique.
• Because the World Health Organization does not classify the rats as primary diagnostics, any positive indications must be confirmed by human microscopy, which restricts access to mainstream TB financing.
• APOPO concentrates services where samples can be transported to specialized labs, with each rat costing roughly €6,000 to train and working for close to a decade under positive‑reinforcement conditioning.
• Demining teams report helping clear more than 50,000 land mines since 2014 and are preparing potential deployments to Angola and Cambodia, while TB screening prioritizes catching every possible case even if one rat’s indication prompts follow‑up.