Its TB, said the giant rat

The World Bank has approved a grant wherein giant pouched rats will help detect tuberculosis (tb) bacteria in human saliva. The project will be carried out in Tanzania, Africa; tg cases there are expected to quintuple, to 8 million, by 2015. The rat (Cricetomys gambianus) can sniff about 120-150 human saliva samples in lab dishes. It normally takes a human technician a whole day to be able to just analyse 20 samples. The rat is trained to stop and wait for a reward in front of samples that smell like tb. The rat just passes by uninfected samples. With almost no use of fancy instruments and no need for skilled and trained personnel, the project proposes to employ local population to carry out the programme.