TB, a Ratbus, Landmines, Africa and Cambodia have in common? The answer is actually quite important and it will make you feel better about the world we live in.
Tanzania and a number of African countries are strewn with land mines. APOPO is an organization helping to safely find and remove those mines.
APOPO is an acronym for a Belgian based organization "Anti-Persoonsmijnen Ontmijnende Product Ontwikkeling": "Anti-Personnel Landmines Detection Product Development"
Bart Weetjens, a citizen of Belgium is the the founder of APOPO. Growing up Weetjens raised a variety of rodents. He read that gerbils had been taught to recognize the scent of explosives and wondered if rodents could be used to detect landmines.
The rodent used in Africa is a common native rat. The rats used have gone through a training regimen. They enter an area on a harness attached to a grid line and leash followed by their handler. When they detect the scent of TNT they scratch the soil and are rewarded with food.
The rats live for eight years. Once trained they can clear an area faster than a human with a mine detector, and do it more accurately and completely. The spots they scratch are a more precise indication of the location of the mine than can be defined by a mine detector.
After nine months of training and passing an accreditation test (as an accredited Med Lab Tech, MLT, I find that both humbling and hilarious) the graduated rats are officially titled MDR, Mine Detection Rat, or more commonly Hero Rat.
This same rat type is also being used in Dar es Salaam and Morogoro,Tanzania, to detect TB in sputum samples by smell. Their positive hits have to be verified by a second rat and then confirmed in the lab. So far the rats have detected 7000 positive samples that were missed by the laboratory procedure.
You'll have to read the article to find out what the sun screen and the banana have to do with all this. It's not long and is a pleasant read that will make you smile. I just know you have figured out what the Ratbus is.
Wikipedia has a nice page on APOPO.
APOPO has an Adopt a Hero Rat program as well if you are so moved.