By Ragna Frans | project assistant
Bubble the TB detection rat is at the end of his training period and will soon be deployed at APOPO’s TB center in Maputo Mozambique. He will help find TB patients that were originally missed by conventional diagnostic methods like microscopy and therefore could not start treatment. Claudi, a six year old boy, is one of the children that was diagnosed with TB by the HeroRATs. He has now recovered and is very happy to be back at school and play soccer with his friends!
After a training of about 6,5 months Bubble has to take one last hurdle: a final blind test, proving he can find 8 positive TB samples out of a total of 30 samples. If he manages to indicate all the positives in a timely matter, he is considered ready for the real job. “We’re confident Bubble will pass the test without any problems. He has been an enthusiastic trainee from the very beginning, his nose will do the rest!”, says HeroRAT trainer Samma.
Bubble will be working in Mozambique, the 4th most TB burdened country in the world with at least 140,000 new TB cases each year. The capital city Maputo counts for more than 13% of the total TB burden in Mozambique. Especially in big and growing cities like Maputo, where most of the population is living and working closely together in informal, unplanned settlements under poor conditions, the infectious disease can claim many victims.
“We’re always happy when we can send our HeroRATs to the operational sites”, Samma adds. “The rats make a difference to thousands of men, women and children who might have died without our heroes finding their TB”.
One of them is Claudi. Claudi is 6 years old and living with his parents and 6 brothers and sisters in a small 3 rooms house. He fell ill last year. He started coughing, having a high fever and feeling very tired. His parents took him to the hospital for a TB test and although they expected it to be positive, the result was negative. Everybody was very worried but nobody could tell what the problem was. Claudi became too weak to get up and go to school, forcing him to miss out on many classes and being unable to spend time with his friends for a long time. Claudi’s sputum sample was then re-tested by the APOPO HeroRATs who detected the presence of TB. APOPO’s lab technicians confirmed this by LED microscopy. The family was surprised to find out rats had been involved in diagnosing Claudi with the disease, but they were very thankful he could finally start treatment. Claudi is now feeling much better and is back to attending school and playing with his friends!
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