APOPO saves lives by training African giant rats for humanitarian detection applications.
Many health and safety challenges, from landmines to diseases such as tuberculosis, persist even when technology innovations could solve them.
APOPO trains and deploys African giant pouched rats for humanitarian detection.
Bart Weetjens realized that trained rats are more efficient and cost effective than other detection solutions for many tasks.
More than 1.4 million people have returned safely to cleared lands.
Cost-effective, locally managed, effective weapons-and-disease-detection technologies that can be deployed globally.
Constant evaluation and monitoring of rats and their performance to meet international certification standards; partnerships with local governments, multilateral agencies, and larger global NGOs to deploy HeroRATs through existing programs that can benefit from their cost-saving effects.
Co-Founder, APOPO
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 the 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 using trained rats as landmine detectors were laughed at for a few years, but with persistence, he secured a research grant from the Belgian Government in 1997 and APOPO (Dutch for Anti-Personnel Land mines Detection Product Development) was launched. Since then, Bart and his colleagues developed and deployed the HeroRATS’ technology to become Africa’s preferred landmine countermeasure technology in 2006.
Christophe Cox took over as CEO in 2008, and Bart has shifted into a higher-level relationship and outward facing role including participation in strategic processes and new applications.
Since 2007, APOPO’s Mine Action Program has released nearly 86 million square meters of land to local communities, freeing over 5.8 million people from the threat of land mines and avoiding an estimated 58,000 injuries and deaths. In 2017, APOPO completed all work in Mozambique after the country was declared to be mine free (a year ahead of schedule). It has now shifted its de-mining efforts to other countries, such as Cambodia, where it is partnering with the Cambodian Mine Action Centre. APOPO is collaborating closely with partners like Humanity Inclusion and Mines Advisory Group to develop iterations of its existing rat and dog mine-detection technology, in order to speed up the process of detecting cluster munition remnants and urban area IEDs‚ which are increasingly becoming important parts of humanitarian mine action. Since 2007, APOPO’s Tuberculosis Program has evaluated hundreds of thousands of samples, identified over 13,000 tuberculosis patients, and prevented an estimated 32,000 additional infections. In Maputo, Mozambique, APOPO’s detection method has led to a 40 percent increase in the tuberculosis detection rate.
For two decades, innovative social enterprise and 2009 Skoll Awardee APOPO, has researched, developed, and implemented detection rats technology for humanitarian purposes, most notably for demining operations. It has freed…
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