Leech farmers supply small but vital medical market

A King Country family are celebrating first-time success overseas with their home-raised medical helpers, reports PAUL YANDALL.

"Don't expect me to hold them too long - I'm not getting attached to them," says Maria Lupton as she struggles to keep the slimy suckers from clinging to her fingers.

Getting attached is exactly what the business is all about for the Lupton family - New Zealand's sole supplier of medical leeches.

The King Country family's hobby of collecting leeches is slowly becoming an international business, one which was highlighted two weeks ago when a 5-year-old Australian girl had her lips ripped off in a dog attack. Forty Lupton leeches were rushed across the Tasman to help to reattach them.

The Brisbane girl is reported to be in a good condition and looks likely to have the full use of her mouth again.

"Knowing it [a shipment of leeches] is going to something like that, helping people like her, that makes it worthwhile," Mrs Lupton says.

Orders for the leeches have come from as far away as Britain and they are regularly sought by New Zealand surgeons and researchers.

Surgeons use the parasites to suck up excess blood, helping to restore blood circulation to reattached digits or limbs.

The leeches excrete a powerful anticoagulant, which allows blood to flow.

In surgery, they fall off their victims once they are full and are replaced, sometimes by up to a couple of hundred others in succession.

The family - Mrs Lupton, husband Robert and teenagers Denise, Colin and Mark - can store close to 2000 leeches on their 320ha farm at Otangiwai, north of Taumarunui.

"Any more and it becomes a bloody hassle," says Mr Lupton.

Denise, Colin and Mark began collecting the worms from freshwater ponds and dams close to the family's old home at Aranga, north of Dargaville, nearly 10 years ago.

These days, an agent collects them from the same ponds and sends them south to the Luptons.

The leeches are stored in air-tight buckets in a shed and kept at a specific temperature to ensure that they stay in a dormant state.

Once a year they are fed cows' blood and pigs' intestines.

"It's the kids' hobby, really," says Mrs Lupton.

"It gives them a bit of pocket money. You couldn't really make a living out of it - there's not a lot of demand for leeches."

But what little demand there is tends to have far-reaching consequences for those who need them.

About 170 leeches were used when surgeons reattached the lip of a Taranaki toddler mauled by a dog three years ago.

The Australian case was the first time the Luptons' leeches had been flown overseas for an emergency.

Australian suppliers were caught short by the dog attack.

"It's hibernating season for them," says Mrs Lupton. "That pretty much means they're in short supply for everyone."

Despite her familiarity with the creatures, she says she still has a hard time managing them. "It's painless when they attach but it's still a hassle getting them off."

Mrs Lupton recommends using salt or a lit cigarette to burn the suckers off.