Chewa The Lab Rat Has A Great Job, Good Retirement Benefits 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Maarten Boersema/APOPO Maarten Boersema/APOPO 
 
 In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, every morning, a medical specialist known as Chewa (a name that means brave in Swahili — but his bosses call him Mchapakazi, the hard worker) gets excited about his job. For two 40 minute sessions, punctuated by a nap and some recreational time with co-workers, he will test smears of human mucus for the presence of tuberculosis by sniffing deeply at each of 10 samples, then letting his supervisors know when he senses the disease in one. He has been taught by staff at the NGO called APOPO to know tuberculosis by its smell . Chewa is a 3-pound African giant-pouched rat. 
 
 An untreated tuberculosis patient can infect up to a dozen people a year. Almost 10 million people worldwide contracted TB in 2014, and some 1.5 million died from it. The disease is largely curable, but first it must be diagnosed. That's where the rats come in. 
 
 Conventional detection techniques in a lab are expensive and time-consuming. Since 2002, APOPO has pioneered the use of what it calls HeroRATS to get the job done in less time for less money. In a long cage with samples of sputum placed in recesses along its floor, the rats are trained to stop and indicate to their handlers when they recognize the scent of tuberculosis. They're rewarded with a treat — usually a bit of banana. 
 
 According to Robin Toal, community manager at APOPO, "Our rats can screen nearly 100 samples in 20 minutes compared to a laboratory technician, who takes around four days to do that many." So far APOPO's rats have screened more than 340,000 TB samples. 
 
 APOPO, which also trains rats to sniff out land mines, this past fall received a USAID Development Innovations Ventures Grant to expand its work with rats and disease detection. APOPO will concentrate on high TB prevalence prisons in Tanzania and Mozambique. It also plans to move beyond prisons to other places where people live and work in close quarters. 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Maarten Boersema/APOPO Maarten Boersema/APOPO 
 
 Hard worker Chewa has a pretty sweet life . Born at a rat breeding center at APOPO's headquarters in Morogoro, Tanzania, he began his training at just a month old. S taffer Albert Carol ("Uncle Albert"), who is charged with socializing all the facility's baby rats, exposes them to people, tastes, smells — and a variety of situations. 
 
 "He pets and strokes them all day. He takes them for rides in his car, or on the back of his motorbike, to different buildings," Toal explains. "All of this is just get them used to a human environment so that they're comfortable with us, because only animals that are relaxed, comfortable and happy are able to do this kind of detection work." Currently 29 HeroRATS are at work detecting TB in Morogoro, with 26 more in the breeding program. 
 
 The rats, which can grow to 3 feet long (including tail), are trained and ready for disease-sniffing at the age of 9 months. Though they have a lifespan of about 8 years, the animals are allowed to retire whenever they want. 
 
 Says Toal: "They're enthusiastic when we come and open the doors in the morning. They jump on our shoulders. As soon as the animals stop showing that same level of enthusiasm, we start to evaluate them a bit closer. They all have daily health inspections and biweekly checks from a vet. A s soon as we think they don't want to do it, then we'll happily let them retire. And they can live out their days lounging with their friends, snacking on watermelon, running on wheels, chasing their tails, whatever they want to do. We still take them out and play with them, they just don't get woken up in the morning. The life of a retired rat is especially blissful." ||||| (Corrects name of U.S. organization in paragraph 9)) 
 
 By Kizito Makoye 
 
 DAR ES SALAAM, March 29 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - S cientists in East Africa plan to exploit trained rats’ highly developed sense of smell to carry out mass screening for tuberculosis among inmates of crowded prisons in Tanzania and Mozambique. 
 
 African Giant Pouched Rats trained by the Belgian non governmental organisation APOPO are widely known for their work sniffing out landmines, and are now developing a reputation in East Africa for their skill and speed at detecting TB too. 
 
 Tuberculosis is the leading cause of death, after HIV, from an infectious disease. Around the world, there are about 9 million new cases a year and around 2 million deaths, according to the World Health Organization. 
 
 In Tanzania, people in communities where TB is most common, including prisons, often fail to show up for screening because of lack of money or awareness, creating a huge burden for health authorities trying to tackle the disease, health officials said. 
 
 Because existing systems lack the accuracy, speed and cost-efficiency required to scale up screening of the highly contagious disease, many TB cases go undiagnosed, they said. 
 
 APOPO, with funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID,) plans to recruit and train more rats to carry out prison screening that it expects to be faster and more reliable than existing methods. 
 
 “We believe our unique TB Detection Rat technology will prove itself as an effective mass-screening tool,” said APOPO’s U.S. director, Charlie Richter. 
 
 “We then aim to expand the programme to all prisons, shantytowns, factories and other settings in Tanzania, Mozambique and other high TB-burden countries, as well as in high-risk groups such as those individuals living with HIV/AIDS. This will improve and save lives all over the globe at a low cost,” Richter said. 
 
 Though data from African jails is hard to come by, studies from Tanzania, Malawi and Ivory Coast show that TB rates are 10 times higher in prisons than in the general population, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 
 
 TRAINING STARTS AT FOUR WEEKS OLD 
 
 APOPO says the rats undergo a rigorous training process that begins when they are four weeks old. As soon as the rats open their eyes, they are introduced to various stimuli and learn how to socialize and interact with people. 
 
 The rats learn to recognise the presence of TB in samples of sputum, mucus that is coughed up from the patient’s lower airways, and rewarded when they succeed. 
 
 The testing process starts when a rat is presented with a row of 10 sputum samples, and when it detects TB the rat hovers over the sample for 3 seconds, Richter said. 
 
 The rats’ accuracy at detecting TB is almost 100 percent, but they cannot distinguish between normal and drug-resistant strains, APOPO scientists say. 
 
 The APOPO system is fast, cheap and has the potential to greatly lower screening costs in poor countries, Richter said. 
 
 While a laboratory technician may take four days to detect tuberculosis, a trained rat can screen 100 samples in 20 minutes, and a rat screening can cost as little as 20 US cents when APOPO operations are running near capacity, he said. 
 
 APOPO’s current programmes have screened more than 340,000 TB samples, halting over 36,000 further infections, and increased detection rates by over 40 percent in several partnered clinics, officials said. 
 
 Khadija Abraham, an expert at Tanzania’s National Leprosy and Tuberculosis Programme, said trained rats had a great ability to detect a wide range of strong-smelling molecules that could help tracking down undiagnosed TB cases, especially in rural areas. 
 
 “Training an animal with a strong and reliable sense of smell to help detect disease in a vast country like Tanzania could potentially offer a valuable solution to help detecting the disease,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. 
 
 Training pouched rats requires little human skill since they only have to be exposed to the smell they need to recognize, Abraham said. 
 
 “Experiments show that these rats can detect a sample with TB parasites in a second and evidence has shown that they are able to sniff out even those with very minimal parasites,”she said. 
 
 TB cases are normally detected by sputum smear microscopy, a slow and costly process that has not changed for years and is not very accurate. The WHO insists that one lab technician should not test more than 20 patients a day, and says the chances of misdiagnosis are high if this exceeded. (Editing by Tim Pearce; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, which covers humanitarian news, women's rights, corruption, climate change. Visit news.trust.org) ||||| The United States Fish and Wildlife Service wants to see if the multitalented African pouched rat can help combat wildlife crimes by sniffing out illegally trafficked animals, such as the pangolin. 
 
 Cat-size African pouched rats have poor eyesight and hearing but a keen sense of smell. A Belgian-based nonprofit has used the species to diagnose tuberculosis in patients by having the rats smell saliva samples—a cheaper and faster way than typical lab tests. The same organization, called APOPO, also trained rats to recognize buried TNT so they can detect land mines in former war zones. So far, the rats have found 1,500 land mines in Africa and Southeast Asia. 
 
 Now the U.S. federal agency is spending $100,000 on a pilot project in Tanzania to train the rats to detect the scales of one of the most trafficked animals on the planet—the pangolin. 
 
 If the project proves promising, the grant would be “the first phase of a much larger project to mainstream rats as an innovative tool in combating illegal wildlife trade,” according to a Fish and Wildlife Service report. The first step will be to determine if the rats can find hidden pangolin scales and meat in a laboratory setting. 
 
 RELATED: Are Wildlife Trafficking Punishments Starting to Fit the Crimes? 
 
 The rat grant is part of a $1.2 million program to find innovative ways to deter wildlife poaching and trafficking. Most of the grant money is focused on deterring illegal trade in the endangered pangolin; more than 1 million of the scaly anteaters have been killed for body parts over the past decade. Their scales are used in traditional Asian medicines, and their meat is considered a delicacy. 
 
 “These grants provide much needed resources to support projects on the ground where wildlife trafficking is decimating some of the Earth’s most cherished and most unusual species,” Dan Ashe, Fish and Wildlife Service director, said in a statement. “These grant recipients are using pioneering approaches to address the illegal wildlife trade in the places where it starts and where demand for wildlife products feeds the criminal supply chain of illegal goods.” 
 
 While the rats could become key to the U.S.’ efforts to halt international wildlife trafficking, the species most likely won’t be coming to America for a victory parade. The rats, also known as Gambian pouched rats, were once imported to the U.S. as an exotic pet. But in the 1990s, a pet breeder released half a dozen rats onto Grassy Key, an island in the middle of the Florida Keys. The rats, capable of growing three feet long and weighing up to nine pounds, quickly began reproducing, and wildlife officials have been trying to eradicate the species ever since.
– Which are you more afraid of: giant rats or dying of tuberculosis? Hopefully you chose dying of tuberculosis, because Reuters reports a Belgian organization called APOPO is training dozens of African giant pouched rats to sniff out TB, starting with at-risk populations in the crowded prisons of Tanzania and Mozambique. "This program is very important as the rats will enable … early detection of TB in risk populations such as prisoners and prison staff," an APOPO doctor tells the Independent. According to NPR, the 3-feet-long rats are quicker, better, and cheaper than lab technicians when it comes to screening for TB. It takes one lab technician four days to screen 100 samples; a rat can screen that many in 20 minutes. And all it wants in compensation is a bit of banana. Baby rats start their training as soon as their eyes open. They're socialized to humans (trainer "Uncle Albert" takes them on motorbike rides in between copious petting) and taught to sniff out the presence of TB in mucus samples. Once fully trained at nine months, they have a nearly 100% accuracy rate in detecting TB. Then it's off to work. One rat named Chewa does two 40-minute screening sessions per day with a break for napping and playing in between. And the usually enthusiastic rats are allowed to retire when they no longer appear to enjoy smelling mucus samples. "They can live out their days lounging with their friends, snacking on watermelon, running on wheels, chasing their tails, whatever they want to do," an APOPO community manager tells NPR. "The life of a retired rat is especially blissful."