According to this Sydney Morning Herald article, dated Tue. 12 Mar. 2019, an elderly resident of Bupa’s Aged Care Home at Eden was hospitalised after maggots were found in a wound in his head.
One of us was brought up on a sheep farm where we had to work tirelessly to prevent blowflies and their maggots doing harm to our sheep – that it should get to the stage where there were grown or growing maggots in a wound in someone’s head is almost unbelievable.
Firstly, why is it described as a “wound” – not a cut or something like that? How would a resident of any decent aged care home get a wound in the first place?
Secondly, how is that blowflies were flying around in this aged care home to begin with? Normally half decent premises of any sort don’t have blowflies flying around in them. There are certain things that can be done to stop blowflies flying around inside premises – why were these things not being done?
Thirdly, how was it that a blowfly or blowflies were allowed to even land on the resident’s head, even for a second?
Fourthly, how is that they were allowed to be on his head for long enough to lay eggs?
Fifthly, how is it that the wound was regarded by the blowflies as a suitable place to lay eggs???? On the farm the only place the blowflies normally ever laid their eggs was on wool that was wet with urine or covered with excreta. How was it that the patient’s wound wasn’t covered with a bandage, or had enough ointment or other treatment on it to make blowflies think it wasn’t a suitable place to lay their eggs? Or putting it another way, how was it that the state of the wound was such that the blowflies thought it WAS a suitable place to lay their eggs?
Sixthly, how was it that apparently nothing was discovered by the the staff at the home until the eggs had turned into maggots, which would have taken at least a week, during which the resident would have felt the maggots starting to eat into his head. Surely the resident would have been complaining long before the situation reached the stage it did?
Seventhly, how was it that the situation was allowed to become so serious that the resident had to be hospitalised, that the maggots could just be brushed off by one of the home’s staff?
Eighthly, and perhaps most importantly, how is it that the staff and management of the home didn’t think that if all of this was allowed to happen that they would get into serious trouble with Ken Wyatt’s Aged Care Safety and Quality Commission, described as “newly beefed-up?” Ha ha ha! Probably because it was perceived as completely ineffective and useless, which, knowing Minister Wyatt as we do, it probably was/is.
We hope to take these things up with Bupa’s management in due course – not that we expect to ever get any indications that they even care.