Ottawa care facility probed over maggot-infested wound
The Ottawa police elder-abuse unit is investigating a nursing home after staff discovered maggots had infested a resident’s leg wound, landing the woman in hospital and horrifying her family.
The discovery suggests flies laid eggs and larvae hatched in the sore before anyone noticed, raising anew questions about the quality of care in Canadian long-term-care facilities.
It takes days for fly larvae to reach a full-grown stage, said Jeff Tomberlin, a Texas A&M University professor and chair of the American board of forensic entomology.
“Maggots in a wound are not good,” he said. “I can’t think of a case where you could actually say it’s not negligent … If they found fully developed larvae in it, you have to wonder how frequently they’re cleaning the wound and really paying attention to what they’re doing.”
The incident comes two years after the same woman, 89-year-old Luba Ignatieva, was “viciously” attacked by another resident at West End Villa in Ottawa, sending her to hospital with a broken hip, her daughter Lara Gerol said.
In the most recent incident, Ignatieva failed to get one of the twice-weekly dressing changes required for a chronic “venous stasis ulcer” on her leg.
When staff finally removed Ignatieva’s bandage on Oct. 10 after six days, they found the sore crawling with maggots and sent her to hospital.
“I was in shock,” said the daughter, who believes either hospital employees or paramedics called the police. “It means the wound was not cleaned properly … It means they’re not even looking.”
In a letter to the home, she wrote: “I don’t have enough words in my vocabulary to describe the horror (we felt) when we learned my mother went to hospital with maggots in her leg.”
Extendicare Inc., West End Villa’s owner, said in a statement it can’t comment on specific residents, but Ignatieva is being looked after by a team that includes a doctor, while the facility is in an “open dialogue” with the family.