Doctors Discover Maggots In Woman’s Ear

When Rochelle Harris, 27, returned from the holiday of a lifetime in Peru, she thought little of the headaches that she had started to develop on the flight back to the UK. But within hours she had developed excruciating shooting pains down one side of her face and had started to hear strange scratching sounds in her head.

On a visit to the hospital, doctors found a small hole in her ear canal which contained a family of eight large maggots. Doctors tried to get the maggots out but the more medics delved into her ear, the more the larvae retreated into Rochelle’s head.

‘I was very scared – I wondered if they were in my brain. I thought to myself “This could be very, very serious.”‘

There was a risk that they were migrating through her head. If one reached her brain it could cause meningitis, fatal bleeding and if one ate through her facial nerve she might be left facially paralysed.



After they were removed, the maggots were immediately sent to a lab for analysis where it was discovered that that a New World Army Screw Worm Fly had laid eggs inside her ear.

Rochelle said she remembered walking through a swarm of flies when in Peru and a fly had got inside her ear. But once she had shooed it away she thought nothing more of it.

Since her traumatic encounter, Rochelle has suffered no long-term problems and she says that there has been a positive side-effect of having maggots living in her head.

She said: ‘I’m no longer as squeamish as I was about bugs – how can you be when they’ve been inside your head?’