Maggots Found in Woman's Mouth at a Western Australian Aged Care Facility

In the past few months, at least three separate incidents of patients being infested with maggots at aged care facilities around Australia have been brought to light. The first was reported in March, when an elderly resident at a facility in regional New South Wales was found with maggots in his head wound. A similar case was recently reported at an aged care facility in north Western Australia. And this week, the Royal Commission into Aged Care discussed an incident in which a palliative patient was found with maggots in her mouth, SBS reports.

Family members made the discovery when visiting the 62-year-old woman at Germanus Kent House—the only aged care facility in Broome, WA—in January 2018. The patient was suffering from advanced dementia, could not speak, and was chair or bed bound, according to the ABC.

"Is it fair to say, in the wet season when flies are a considerable problem up here, they have obviously laid eggs in the mouth of the patient," Paul Bolster, council assisting the Commissioners, asked Germanus Kent House’s acting business manager Rejane Le Grange. Rejane agreed that it was, adding that "the resident had poor ability to chew, so there was food pooling and moisture pooling in her mouth which would have created an ideal environment."

Rejane, who was working in Perth at the time of the incident, noted that some measures have since been put in place to prevent these kinds of things from happening again. Palliative care residents who want to lay in a bed outside are now enclosed by netting, she said, while patients receiving a wound dressing are now being protected by adjustable fly-screens. But the string of maggot-related incidents has highlighted a chronic problem with hygiene and quality of care at Australian aged care facilities.

Registered nurse Yvonne Grosser told the Royal Commission that when she worked at Germanus Kent House she was the only nurse responsible for 60 patients—while outside the Commission hearing, Royal Flying Doctor Service chief executive Martin Laverty said the usually emergency-focused service was now responding to requests from aged care providers for help with basic measures such as dental hygiene.

"Anecdotally we're being told there isn't the time within the workload of some care staff to be able to brush teeth, to support brushing teeth," he said.

The Royal Commission into Aged Care, established in October last year, is ongoing.

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