Maggots on the NHS? What next, leeches?
THE crisis in the NHS must be worse than we thought. Doctors are using live maggots to treat stubborn open wounds. Despite the extra billions being pumped into the health service, some infections are proving resistant to modern antibiotics.
Never mind Covid, experts are now predicting that ten million people a year will die from superbugs by 2050. In desperation, clinicians have fallen back on a method pioneered centuries ago by aboriginal communities in Australia and South America.
The treatment, which involves using larvae to eat dead tissue, was commonly used between the two world wars, but was phased out in the 1940s.
Now it is enjoying a renaissance, with the NHS buying 9,000 bags of greenbottle blowfly maggots from a company in South Wales at a cost of between £150 and £300 a pop. Each contains between 50 and 400 live maggots.
I had thought about filing this under You Couldn’t Make It Up, but it is deadly serious. Who could have imagined that in the 21st century our ‘world-leading’ NHS would still be using medieval maggot therapy to treat patients?
What next — bloodletting? leeches? Given that we keep hearing that Britain is in the grip of a mental health crisis, maybe it’s time to bring back trepanning — the ancient practice of drilling a hole in the skull to relieve pressure on the brain.
OK, SO the patient on the receiving end of trepanning usually died, but think of all the money we’d save on antidepressants. How many people currently insisting they are suffering from ‘mental health issues’ would miraculously recover if they thought that instead of prescribing Prozac, their doctor would reach for the Black & Decker!
We could slash the NHS budget, which now consumes more than 40 per cent of day-to-day
Government spending, if more tried-and-tested medical treatments were reintroduced.
Hot irons for haemorrhoids, anyone? Applying animal dung to cure erectile dysfunction? A lot cheaper than Viagra, admittedly, but probably counter-productive. Forget about gastric bands and free gym subscriptions on the NHS. The morbidly obese could be made to eat tapeworms, a popular weight-loss regime in Victorian times.
It may all sound a bit retrograde, but throwing money at the health service doesn’t seem to have worked. In some parts of the country there’s a desperate shortage of family doctors, with an average of one GP per 2,000 patients. In the worst-hit areas, it’s virtually impossible to book a faceto-face appointment. The crisis is compounded by many GPs opting to work just three days a week.
Maybe it’s time we started hiring Australian aborigines and South American medicine men to make up the shortfall. Better still, why bother waiting for an in-person appointment or Zoom consultation when you can cut out the middle man and cultivate your own maggots at home?
And why not? If it works, you’ll be doing yourself a favour and easing the pressure on Our Amazing NHS. But if I were you, I’d give the hot irons a miss . . .