Science communication : Maggot therapy

A short pitch on an different view of medical word in treatment instead of medicine from drugs or high technology surgical intervention.


With this, i written down the subtitle for this video.

One day, when I was visiting a (relative at) hospital, I saw a man sitting at the corner of the room and a foul smell comes from him. I took another look at him and saw that were maggots eating his flesh, so how does he even let it happened? It turns out that it is actually a type of medical treatment to treat gangrene. Gangrene (in simpler terms) is dead tissue caused by several factors such as diabetes melitus and can be overcome by several types of treatment and one of it is maggot therapy. How does it work and does it effectively works? It is! Maggot therapy can be used in patients who does not withstand the pain from surgical treatment (postsurgery). maggots that are being used in these type of treatment are not the one that being collected at dustbin (or on dead carcasses) but these maggots are bred in laboratories to ensure maggots are free from bacteria that can worsen the patient condition. So why maggots? Maggots actually only feed on dead tissues and will leave the healthy ones (they stopped eating if there's no dead tissues). This is great to clear up the wound at gangrene. Maggots might be a taboo to some people (bad reputation as being dirty or etc) but it actually benefit in medicine. Hence, it is a perfect example of don't judge a book by its cover.

therapy