Kari tries maggot therapy in wound care

The Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (Kari) has begun maggot therapy trials in wound treatment.

Dr Phoebe Mukiria from Kari Trypanosomiasis Research Center (TRC) regrets wound care in Kenya is quite expensive yet maggot therapy only involves production of the worms.

“Maggot treatment is an old method of wound treatment and we are conducting principal studies with Kenyatta National hospital (KNH).

“The studies are meant to establish whether the method can be adapted to reduce the burden of wound management in hospitals,” she said.

The treatment will go a long way in helping patients who sustain injuries in road accidents and those with diabetes.

Maggot Debridement Therapy (MDT) is a type of biotherapy involving introduction of live, disinfected maggots (fly larvae) into a non-healing skin and soft tissue wound(s) of a human being or animal to clean out the dead tissue.

Mukiria was speaking during the Kenya Science Journalist Congress at the Kenya Medical Research Institute headquarters in Nairobi. 

She said the treatment would reduce time taken to clean up wounds before the skin is ready for grafting.

“We hope to introduce this technology in one year and reach out to many people with wounds that are not responding to conventional wound dressing. If the trial gets approval from the KNH review committee, we will perform the trials on livestock,” said Mukiria.

-KNA