So long Casualty but not the final act for maggot therapy!

Today marked the final episode the Love a Maggot Team worked on with the Casualty team. In this episode a patient with a serious burn is treated by maggot therapy.  Maggot therapy is excellent for cleaning burn wounds, which help the wound to heal faster.  In Magdalena’s case, her wound was on the base of her foot, which might present a challenge to bagged maggots, but Jade and Dylan got around this issue by using  free range maggots directly on the wound and covered with a breathable bandage.

Unfortunately, there was an important issue with Magdalena standing on the maggots!! These tiny little creatures, if placed on the soles of foot wounds can die if squished by the patient forgetting they are there!!

Hopefully, this does not happen too often in real life, and in general maggots can usually work away at their task for 3-4 days before being removed.  If needed though, maggots can be applied over again (depending on the wound) so a course of MDT could last up to several weeks.

Excitingly, a brand new project around maggot therapy in conflict zones has been initiated.  Funded by the Humanitarian Grand Challenge fund ‘Creating Hope in Conflict’, the idea is to provide DIY maggot laboratories to areas in conflict and to develop a set of processes around the rearing and applying of maggots which could help people on the ground to deal with wounds that would otherwise be left untreated.  You can read more about this in our previous blog.   For now, check out the two short videos below where Yamni and Tom talk  and ‘practice’ maggot therapy!