APOPO US

Mine Action:

APOPO seeks to deploy cost efficient solutions – including rats and its land release methodology – a process that combines community surveys and logical deployment of resources depending on threat level assessments to efficiently determine mined areas. APOPO's long term goal is to be the animal detection consultants/ service provider that ensures animals and land release are used by larger NGO's throughout the world whenever the land mine situation justifies it. If APOPO can establish itself in this role, they can take the burdensome effort of training, accrediting, and deploying animals off the hands of major operators who will then see catalytic time and cost savings from the combined use of animals and traditional more expensive mine detection assets.

TB Detection:

By 2025 APOPO hopes it will have screened over 1,000,000 high risk individuals and helped identify over 50,000 people not found by local clinics. In doing so APOPO will help curb the huge problem of undiscovered and untreated TB, which is one of the the primary reason it is now the deadliest infectious disease in the world recently surpassing HIV.

New Applications:

By 2025 APOPO hopes to have at least two new applications fully researched and implemented in the field. These could include cancer screening rats, search and rescue rats, or rats who search for illegal wildlife products, like rhino horn or ivory, in air or sea ports.

Mine Action:

APOPO is currently providing animals and land release consultation services to the Cambodian Mine Action Center in Cambodia and Norwegian People's Aid (NPA) in Angola. It is also exploring a variety of partnerships with NGO's and military demining units in Colombia, including setting up a shared rat pool that could be utilized by multiple organizations at once and therefore limit down time when speedy rats are waiting for slower machines and humanitarian deminers to prepare ground area for animal searching. By 2025, APOPO hopes to be firmly established as the animal detection providers for the majority of demining NGO's in the world, which should create a catalytic time and cost saving impact in the field.

TB Detection:

APOPO scales its TB operations by partnering up with National Tuberculosis program clinics in high TB burden mega cites, and managing the whole TB detection process from sample collection at partner clinics, to screening with its algorithm in a stand alone centralized laboratory. APOPO hopes to be By simultaneously proving operational feasibility across Dar Es Salaam, Maputo, and Addis Ababa, and working to improve the accuracy of its system through genetic, behavioral, and evaluation cage research, APOPO believes it will be in a stronger position to gain major TB stakeholder buy in over the next few years. APOPO then hopes to scale to at least 10 high burden mega cities by 2025, by transitioning away from full scale project management, to providing a cost saving, impact increasing, affordable TB rat detection service package to existing TB detection stakeholders.

New Applications:

APOPO is the only organization in the world who has developed methodology to train African Giant Rats through positive behavior reinforcement. By using rat training best practices from its TB and Mine Action training programs, and partnering up with leading institutions in new fields, APOPO should be able to successfully train and implement rats in new areas. For example APOPO is currently working with the US Wildlife Trust to determine if detection rats can find pangolin shells, the most trafficked illegal wildlife product in the world.

APOPO maintains three core parts of its operational management team;

1) Research and Development Staff that have masters, PHD's and years of experience in Animal Behavioral Research, Neuroscience, and other related fields. These individuals have years of experience training rodents and other animals on various behaviors and constantly work to train high quality TB and Mine Detection Rats, and also research new novel applications.

2) TB Program Staff have masters, PHD's and MD's in epidemiology, and infectious disease, and years of experience implementing quality TB control programs in low income, high burden countries. These individuals set performance expectations for TB Detection Rats, and develop programs that allow APOPO to maximize the high speed, and low costs of detection rat technology to greatly enhance TB detection results in developing countries.

3) Mine action staff are generally former high level military officers, who also have years of experience managing demining operations in inflicted areas. These individuals develop deployment strategies and partnerships that allow the mine action industry to maximize the catalytic cost and time savings offered by mine detection rats.

In addition to management teams that are highly qualified in their relevant fields, APOPO makes a commitment to providing local employment whenever possible, and over 95% of its staff our host country nationals. This is partially made possible by the simplicity of its rat training and handling processes which allow APOPO to hire individuals who never attended college.

In the last ten year mine detection HeroRATs helped clear over 80,000,000 square meters of land from the threat of landmines and were part of the reason Mozambique was declared mine free years before expectations. TB detection HeroRats have identified almost 12,000 patients missed by local clinics. APOPO is also exploring new applications of laboratory based detection rats technology including cancer screening, and uncovering illegal wildlife smuggling in East African ports. APOPO is also exploring using the rats during search and rescue operations to navigate through fallen ruble that it too tight for larger dogs and find survivors so that rescuers can get to them faster.