Secondly the wound must be cleaned and disinfected. Further control is necessary to avoid further reinfestation.Livestock may be treated prophylactically with slow-release boluses containing ivermectin, which can provide long-term protection against the development of the larvae. Sheep also may be dipped, a process which involves drenching the animals in persistent insecticide to poison the larvae before they develop into a problem. Epidemiology
The most common infected animal worldwide is the domestic sheep, for more information see fly strike in sheep. This condition is caused by the blowfly (particularly Lucilia sericata and its sister species L. cuprina), especially where the weather is often hot and wet. Blowfly strike accounts for over A$170 million a year in losses in the Australian sheep industry, the largest such losses in the world. Given the seriousness of the risk, Australian sheep farmers commonly perform preventive measures such as mulesing designed to remove the most common targets for the flies. The docking of lambs tails (another frequently-soiled area that flies target) is also commonly practiced by sheep farmers worldwide. Maggots also occasionally infest the vulvar area, causing the condition called vulvar myiasis. Such problems are not peculiar to Australia and New Zealand; they occur worldwide, especially in countries where livestock, particularly sheep, are kept under hot, wet, conditions, including most of Africa and the Americas, ranging from the cold temperate regions in the north, to corresponding latitudes in the south.
Maggot therapy – also known as maggot debridement therapy (MDT), larval therapy, larva therapy, or larvae therapy – is the intentional introduction by a health care practitioner of live, disinfected green bottle fly maggots into the non-healing skin and soft tissue wounds of a human or other animal for the purpose of selectively cleaning out only the necrotic tissue within a wound in order to promote healing.Although maggot therapy has been used in the US for the past 80 years, it was approved by the FDA as a medical device only in 2004 (along with leeches). Maggots were the first live organism to be marketed in the US according to FDA regulations, and are approved for treating neuropathic (diabetic) foot ulcers, pressure ulcers, venous stasis ulcers, and traumatic and post-surgical wounds that are unresponsive to conventional therapies. Maggots were used in medicine before this time, but were not federally regulated. In 1990, California internist Ronald Sherman began treating patients with maggots produced at his lab at the UC Irvine School of Medicine. Sherman went on to co-found Monarch Labs in 2005, which UC Irvine contracted to produce maggots for Shermans own continuing clinical research on myiasis at the university. Monarch Labs also sells maggots to hospitals and other medical practices, the first US commercial supplier to do so since the last one closed in 1935.In the US, demand for these fly larvae doubled after the FDA ruling. Maggot therapy is now used in more than 300 sites across the country.