Tens of thousands of ordinary greenbottle flies are swarming inside 30 boxes in a cleanroom at an unassuming building in a south Wales business park, where passersby would not suspect that insect eggs are regularly collected to breed larvae for “maggot therapy” on the NHS.
Hundreds of UK health service hospitals as well as clinics in Germany are using maggots to clean chronic wounds such as diabetic leg ulcers and speed up the healing process – reviving a centuries-old tradition practised by Maya tribes in Central America and Indigenous Australians.
