VA Staff Resigned After Maggots Were Found In Dead Veteran’s Wound

Four VA staff in Oklahoma quit when they found out that an elderly veteran died due to a wound infected with maggots which were not sterile.

Owen Peterson was a Vietnam veteran born in Texas. Furthermore, the 73-year-old man was also a country poet. The incident occurred in a retirement home for veterans in Talihina, Oklahoma. Doctors concluded that the veteran was killed by sepsis, a condition associated with the non-sterile maggots found in the festering wound.

His son, Raymie Parker, asked the facility workers who were supposed to provide his father with medical assistance to take better care of him. Parker confessed that he spent three weeks there, time during which he requested the medical staff to change his father’s bandages and increase his medications.

However, his demands were ignored. Therefore, the health care workers might be sued if the doctors discover that the veteran died because he was neglected. Although Myles Deering, the Executive Director, claims that the maggots were found in the wound when the man was alive, and that the death was caused by the sepsis.

However, some say that the health care workers quit because they wanted to avoid facing the consequences of the veteran’s death. More precisely, they didn’t want to be held accountable for anything related to the non-sterile maggots found in the unhealed wound.

It is worth mentioning that the officials from the Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs refused to investigate the incident. The doctors said that the maggots were non-sterile, different than those used to treat some conditions.

That is why the experts suspect that the maggots might have transmitted the deadly bacteria that caused sepsis. The blow fly larvae are usually prescribed by the U.S. public health specialists as approved medical treatment.

However, the veteran’s son might never find out the main cause leading to his father’s death. It is not the first time when retirement homes face such accusations as many other patients have been neglected before.

The physician assistant involved in the scandal was immediately rehired by an Oklahoma VA facility. It is known yet whether the other three will be rehired as well.

Image Source: Static Flickr