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I'm here today to share with you

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an extraordinary journey --

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extraordinarily rewarding journey, actually --

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which brought me into

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training rats

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to save human lives

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by detecting landmines

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and tuberculosis.

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As a child, I had two passions.

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One was a passion for rodents.

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I had all kinds of rats,

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mice, hamsters,

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gerbils, squirrels.

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You name it, I bred it, and I sold them to pet shops.

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(Laughter)

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I also had a passion for Africa.

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Growing up in a multicultural environment,

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we had African students in the house,

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and I learned about their stories,

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so different backgrounds,

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dependency on imported know-how,

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goods, services,

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exuberant cultural diversity.

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Africa was truly fascinating for me.

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I became an industrial engineer,

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engineer in product development,

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and I focused on appropriate detection technologies,

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actually the first appropriate technologies

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for developing countries.

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I started working in the industry,

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but I wasn't really happy to contribute

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to a material consumer society

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in a linear, extracting

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and manufacturing mode.

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I quit my job to focus on the real world problem:

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landmines.

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We're talking '95 now.

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Princess Diana is announcing on TV

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that landmines form a structural barrier

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to any development, which is really true.

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As long as these devices are there,

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or there is suspicion of landmines,

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you can't really enter into the land.

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Actually, there was an appeal worldwide

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for new detectors

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sustainable in the environments

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where they're needed to produce,

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which is mainly in the developing world.

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We chose rats.

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Why would you choose rats?

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Because, aren't they vermin?

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Well, actually rats are,

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in contrary to what most people think about them,

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rats are highly sociable creatures.

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And actually, our product -- what you see here.

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There's a target somewhere here.

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You see an operator, a trained African

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with his rats in front

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who actually are left and right.

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There, the animal finds a mine.

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It scratches on the soil.

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And the animal comes back for a food reward.

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Very, very simple.

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Very sustainable in this environment.

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Here, the animal gets its food reward.

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And that's how it works.

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Very, very simple.

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Now why would you use rats?

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Rats have been used since the '50s last century,

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in all kinds of experiments.

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Rats have more genetic material

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allocated to olfaction

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than any other mammal species.

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They're extremely sensitive to smell.

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Moreover, they have the mechanisms to map all these smells

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and to communicate about it.

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Now how do we communicate with rats?

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Well don't talk rat,

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but we have a clicker,

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a standard method for animal training,

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which you see there.

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A clicker, which makes a particular sound

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with which you can reinforce particular behaviors.

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First of all, we associate the click sound with a food reward,

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which is smashed banana and peanuts together in a syringe.

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Once the animal knows click, food,

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click, food, click, food --

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so click is food --

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we bring it in a cage with a hole,

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and actually the animal learns

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to stick the nose in the hole

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under which a target scent is placed,

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and to do that for five seconds --

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five seconds, which is long for a rat.

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Once the animal knows this, we make the task a bit more difficult.

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It learns how to find the target smell

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in a cage with several holes, up to 10 holes.

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Then the animal learns

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to walk on a leash in the open

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and find targets.

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In the next step, animals learn

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to find real mines in real minefields.

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They are tested and accredited

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according to International Mine Action Standards,

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just like dogs have to pass a test.

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This consists of 400 square meters.

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There's a number of mines

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placed blindly,

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and the team of trainer and their rat

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have to find all the targets.

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If the animal does that, it gets a license

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as an accredited animal

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to be operational in the field --

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just like dogs, by the way.

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Maybe one slight difference:

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we can train rats at a fifth of the price

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of training the mining dog.

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This is our team in Mozambique:

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one Tanzanian trainer,

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who transfers the skills

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to these three Mozambican fellows.

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And you should see the pride in the eyes of these people.

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They have a skill,

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which makes them much less dependent

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on foreign aid.

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Moreover, this small team

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together with, of course, you need the heavy vehicles

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and the manual de-miners to follow-up.

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But with this small investment in a rat capacity,

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we have demonstrated in Mozambique

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that we can reduce the cost-price per square meter

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up to 60 percent

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of what is currently normal --

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two dollars per square meter, we do it at $1.18,

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and we can still bring that price down.

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Question of scale.

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If you can bring in more rats,

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we can actually make the output even bigger.

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We have a demonstration site in Mozambique.

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Eleven African governments

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have seen that they can become less dependent

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by using this technology.

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They have signed the pact for peace

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and treaty in the Great Lakes region,

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and they endorse hero rats

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to clear their common borders of landmines.

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But let me bring you to a very different problem.

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And there's about 6,000 people last year

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that walked on a landmine,

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but worldwide last year,

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almost 1.9 million died from tuberculosis

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as a first cause of infection.

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Especially in Africa

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where T.B. and HIV are strongly linked,

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there is a huge common problem.

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Microscopy, the standard WHO procedure,

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reaches from 40 to 60 percent reliability.

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In Tanzania -- the numbers don't lie --

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45 percent of people -- T.B. patients --

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get diagnosed with T.B. before they die.

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It means that, if you have T.B.,

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you have more chance that you won't be detected,

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but will just die from T.B. secondary infections and so on.

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And if, however,

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you are detected very early, diagnosed early,

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treatment can start,

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and even in HIV-positives, it makes sense.

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You can actually cure T.B.,

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even in HIV-positives.

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So in our common language, Dutch,

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the name for T.B.

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is "tering,"

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which, etymologically,

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refers to the smell of tar.

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Already the old Chinese

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and the Greek, Hippocrates,

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have actually published,

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documented, that T.B. can be diagnosed

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based on the volatiles

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exuding from patients.

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So what we did is we collected some samples --

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just as a way of testing --

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from hospitals,

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trained rats on them

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and see if this works,

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and wonder, well,

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we can reach 89 percent sensitivity,

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86 percent specificity

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using multiple rats in a row.

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This is how it works,

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and really, this is a generic technology.

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We're talking now explosives, tuberculosis,

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but can you imagine,

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you can actually put anything under there.

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So how does it work?

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You have a cassette with 10 samples.

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You put these 10 samples at once in the cage.

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An animal only needs two hundredths of a second

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to discriminate the scent, so it goes extremely fast.

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Here it's already at the third sample.

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This is a positive sample.

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It gets a click sound and comes for the food reward.

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And by doing so, very fast,

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we can have like a second-line opinion

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to see which patients are positive,

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which are negative.

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Just as an indication,

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whereas a microscopist can process

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40 samples in a day,

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a rat can process

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the same amount of samples

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in seven minutes only.

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A cage like this --

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(Applause)

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A cage like this -- provided that you have rats,

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and we have now currently

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25 tuberculosis rats --

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a cage like this, operating throughout the day,

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can process 1,680 samples.

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Can you imagine the potential offspring applications --

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environmental detection

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of pollutants in soils,

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customs applications,

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detection of illicit goods in containers and so on.

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But let's stick first to tuberculosis.

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I just want to briefly highlight,

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the blue rods

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are the scores of microscopy only

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at the five clinics in Dar es Salaam

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on a population of 500,000 people,

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where 15,000 reported to get a test done.

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Microscopy for 1,800 patients.

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And by just presenting the samples once more to the rats

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and looping those results back,

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we were able to increase case detection rates

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by over 30 percent.

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Throughout last year,

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we've been -- depending on which intervals you take --

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we've been consistently

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increasing case detection rates

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in five hospitals in Dar es Salaam

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between 30 and 40 percent.

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So this is really considerable.

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Knowing that a missed patient by microscopy

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infects up to 15 people,

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healthy people, per year,

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you can be sure

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that we have saved lots of lives.

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At least our hero rats have saved lots of lives.

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The way forward for us

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is now to standardize this technology.

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And there are simple things

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like, for instance, we have a small laser in the sniffer hole

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where the animal has to stick for five seconds.

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So, to standardize this.

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Also, to standardize the pellets,

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the food rewards,

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and to semi-automate this

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in order to replicate this on a much larger scale

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and affect the lives of many more people.

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To conclude, there are also other applications at the horizon.

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Here is a first prototype

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of our camera rat,

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which is a rat with a rat backpack

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with a camera that can go under rubble

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to detect for victims

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after earthquake and so on.

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This is in a prototype stage.

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We don't have a working system here yet.

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To conclude, I would actually like to say,

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you may think this is about rats, these projects,

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but in the end it is about people.

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It is about empowering vulnerable communities

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to tackle difficult, expensive

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and dangerous humanitarian detection tasks,

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and doing that with a local resource,

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plenty available.

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So something completely different

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is to keep on challenging your perception

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about the resources surrounding you,

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whether they are environmental,

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technological, animal, or human.

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And to respectfully harmonize with them

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in order to foster a sustainable work.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)