By Ragna Frans | project assistant
Dear APOPO supporter,
We shared the exciting news of Mozambique being officially mine-free but our HeroRATs and demining teams are still working in the country. The humanitarian demining tasks came to a close but APOPO is currently supporting the Mozambican National Institute of Demining with some residual tasks, like ammunitions clearance of a former weapons store that is being transformed into an ecological park. We have 16 HeroRATs supporting the operations at Malhazine and the task is progressing well. So far we have verified 76,647 square meters of land and safely discovered and identified 4,550 items of unexploded ordnance, 13 landmines and 140 items of small arms and ammunitions.
In Cambodia the mine detection rats arriving earlier this year have almost finished their in-country training and are being tested before deployment in the minefields. All HeroRATs have successfully taken a first important hurdle before deployment in the real minefields by passing a performance test according to International Mine Action Standards (IMAS) and administered by the Cambodian Mine Action Authorities and our partner the Cambodian Mine Action Center (CMAC). They will now move on to a last stage of testing before being deployed on to the minefields and saving lives!
We’re also happy to announce we’ve implemented a new strategy that will help us to get more TB patients on treatment. The TB team in Mozambique are collecting sputum samples from 14 clinics every day and the HeroRATs are now testing the samples till well into the night, allowing us to return test results to the clinics in less than 24 hours. This means that patients, who are tested as negative by the clinics, but found TB positive by APOPO, will now be told of the APOPO result before leaving the clinic. This reduces the need to track them down at their homes, and gets more people on to TB treatment immediately.
We couldn’t have accomplished all this without your generous support and we would like to thank you wholeheartedly.
With gratitude,
The HeroRAT team
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