Bart Weetjens « Skoll Foundation

APOPO

Skoll Entrepreneur(s): Bart Weetjens
Change(s) Addressed: Health, Peace & Security

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DESCRIPTION:

As a boy, Bart Weetjens loved all kinds of rodents. He kept them as pets and bred them to earn extra spending money. It was early 1990s and the landmine issue was being addressed in the media. While searching for an alternative detector, Bart remembered his youth pets with their logistic conveniences and easy trainability. Bart’s proposals to investigate the feasibility of using trained rats as landmine detectors were laughed at for a few years; but with persistence, he finally secured a research grant from the Belgian Government in 1997 and APOPO was launched. Since then, Bart and his colleagues have developed and deployed the HeroRATS’ technology to become Africa’s preferred landmine countermeasure technology in 2006.

KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS OF 2010

APOPO’s HeroRATS have returned 1.3 million square meters of suspected minefields to original populations in Mozambique, impacting more than 50,000 individuals.
This African approach is now being copied in Latin America and South East Asia.
APOPO’s HeroRATS diagnosed over 900 TB patients in Tanzania and prevented TB infection in 13,500 healthy people.

SEE THEIR WORK IN ACTION:

It has been over seventeen years since Mozambique was torn apart by civil war.
When the war ended, there was said to be close to three million unexploded land mines littering the country.

During wars, land mines are often laid in strategic places like this railroad in Mozambique, to protect them.
After the war ends, it's the citizens returning to these areas who are vulnerable.

I met a social entrepreneur in Tanzania who wants to make the land safe using his unique method.

We do that by training, a local resource, rats, that actually they are very sociable and intelligent creatures.

That's it.

Bart Weigen's unique method of de-mining is rats.

APOPO, the organization Bart founded trains African couch rats to sniff out the TNT in land mines.

Along with an amazing sense of smell, they are easily trained and unlike sniffer dogs they are cheap to look after and highly adaptable.

I traveled to Tanzania, to visit Bart's social enterprise APOPO.

Here the rats are conditioned to associate the smell of TNT with the food reward.

The idea is, they will be motivated to find mines if they are rewarded when they do.

So he's looking for food now?

But in order to get food he has to show why the TNT made among this four. And you do this repeatedly every single time? He's biting it again.

Once the rats have learned to associate TNT with the correct behavioral response, it's on to the next stage.

Stevie and I are on our way to the fields the rats are tested they'll be asked to find TNT in a big field.

The rats run along a wire so the handlers know which areas rats have checked.

Different types of mines with varying levels of TNT placed at different depths, and the performance of each rat is recorded.

But the rat's talents don't stop there.

Some of the rats are being trained to detect a very different killer - tuberculosis.

This is one of the clinics APOPO are working with to develop this ...diagnostic tool.

TB is hard to detect and results can take days to process.

Rats can process as many many samples in seven minutes as a lab technician does in a day.

And I was told, they have even diagnosed TB in patients which conventional tests have missed.

Now, I have journeyed to Mozambique, where the rats I saw trained in Tanzania are being used in real mine fields to detect these brutal weapons.

I want to see the rats in action, but I am nervous about entering the minefield.

I would rather leave that to the road of heroes.

The rats are woken and taken to the mine field at 5 am, where they will only work a three hour shift. not because they have a good union. It's actually because they're naturally nocturnal. Here the rats only work early in the morning to avoid the punishing heat.
Well that's one of the boxes cleared.

When you see that happen, how do you feel?

Relieved! This is an area that villagers can use again. Square meter after square meter, we open land and create the necessary circumstances for people to develop.

Two men using metal detectors can clear up 200 square meters per day. But two men using rats can do that in 90 minutes. Rats can clear the ground more quickly, because they are looking for the smell of the explosive material instead of the casing around it. Residents living near the mine fields can now collect wood, graze cattle, or simply walk without fear.
I went to meet one of those residents, a veteran of the civil war, who now points Apopo in the direction of mines he planted.

Did you ever imagine that they would be around today to hurt people?

That's why I want them removed.
They're destroying lives.
If only we were shown how to disarm mines when we planted them.
They blew us up too.
We're not developing because of them.

Electricity lines destroyed during the conflict, are being rebuilt.
The town of Mabolani will have power for the first time in decades.
Thanks to a popo.
Hero rats are a low tech, cost effective, and efficient solution to this global problem.

By December 2009, they had already returned 1.3 million square meters of suspected land at a cost of a dollar eighteen per square meter.

But the world is still full of land mines. And, at the current rate of removal we are still many years away from a mineimpact free world. We need the job done faster. To find out how you can get involved, or contribute to Apopos work Visit: www.herorat.org. Your vital contributions will help Apopo to carry on their essential work

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