There is a large and mostly unmet global need for affordable and efficacious wound care, despite modern-day medicine advancing at break-neck speed. Indeed, the tide of chronic wounds is rising. Modern lifestyle changes, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), bring a rapid rise in non-communicable disease including cardiovascular disease, obesity, and diabetes, with the latter leading to diabetic ulcers at a lifetime incidence of up to 25% [1]. The cities and urban centres in fast-growing parts of the world are also struggling with ever-increasing motorisation and poor road safety standards while local healthcare systems in many LMICs are ill-prepared for the high traffic accident and injury burden [2, 3]. Likewise, due to population growth and urbanisation in disaster prone regions, the number of people exposed to disaster risk and related injuries is also growing. Where there is conflict there is also injury. Due to changes in the nature of warfare there are now far more casualties among the civilian population than among fighting soldiers [4]. People in such conflict zones and complex humanitarian crises are often isolated and are unable to properly care for the many injured due to limited resources. Acute traumatic war injuries therefore lead to infected chronic wounds and ultimately a high burden of amputation and death. To make matters worse, antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria are highly prevalent in conflict and LMIC environments due to their mis- and overuse in human and veterinary medicine.