At present, more than 100 million landmines have been deployed in more than 90 countries and they kill or maim 40 to 55 people per day on average, according to an estimate by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Combatants continue to lay 40,000 new mines each year and it is thought that at present rates, it will take 500 years to remove them all. Africa is burdened with a large percentage of the world's landmines. This is primarily due to various countries’ civil wars. Mozambique’s civil war, for example, lasted many decades and left in its wake approximately 500,000 sporadically laid landmines. Many countries in Africa are also burdened with financial and infrastructural challenges that make detecting and removing landmines difficult. Today these landmines have come to affect many different facets of life for those living in afflicted countries. The unnecessary loss of human life is of course the worst and most widely known repercussion. The net impact of landmines, however, is often forgotten. For example, once a landmine has been spotted in an area the entire area becomes unusable as farmers can no longer farm there and children can no longer play there. Landmine accidents invariably inflict economic damage and societal trauma, thereby inflicting further damage in countries that are trying to recover from the ravages of civil war. APOPO has won the support of major demining organizations such as the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining by showing how using trained rats offers a cost-effective, efficient, and local solution to help combat this problem.