This follows a successful implementation of the technology, named SUA-APOPO Rodent -- to sniff out and diagnose the disease, proving “effective and faster than conventional diagnostic methods’’ in Tanzania and Mozambique.
A scientist and trainer, Ms Mariam Juma, told reporters at the 40th Dar es Salaam International Trade Fair (DITF) in the city yesterday that the two countries are among African countries with higher rate of TB cases.
“The plan is underway and this will include opening up a centre in Dar es Salaam where there are more cases of TB reported in the country,” she told the ‘Daily News’.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), Tanzania is among the 22 high-burden countries suffering from the TB bacterial infection. New cases of TB remained relatively higher last year at 781,936 people up from 83,227 detected in 2014.
“The increase in new cases results to mass awareness campaign conducted by local and international organisations and with the government,” an official in the Ministry of Health clarified to the ‘Daily News’.
However, Ms Juma was of the view that the increase in the number of new cases follows last year’s campaign launched by SUA and the ministry to diagnose prisons and industry workers. “Most Tanzanians are less willing to examine their health status until otherwise someone is ill,” she said.
We’re now moving to sensitize the public to examine their health status and we will be visiting various manufacturing and processing industries,” she emphasized.Acknowledging the work of African poached giant rats, SUA scientists and lecturer Pius Mhapuly said the SUA-APOPO technology is widely known for detecting bombs and now is proving effective in the area of health. “The research is an ongoing exercise,” he said, “and we expect it would help save more lives”.
He defended the new technology, saying it had helped to provide positive results from a sample of negative sputum provided from a number of research centres. Mr Mhapuly explained that the trained rats learn to recognise the presence of TB in samples of sputum, coughed up from the patient’s lower airways. For testing, he explained that a rat has to go through a row of 10 sputum samples.
When it detects any TB strain, the rat hovers over the sample for at least three seconds. One rat can diagnose 100 samples in less than 15 minutes while the same sample can take as longer as two days in conventional methods, Mr Mhapuly said.
TB is the leading cause of death after HIV from infectious diseases and the WHO statistics shows around the world, there are about nine million new cases and two million deaths
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