Patients with a deadly food bug are being cured thanks to a stomach-churning new treatment – they’re being fed liquid faeces.

More than 20 patients with Clostridium difficile – or C. diff – at Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham are being saved thanks to faecal transplants.

The unconventional treatment has a 90% success rate when normal antibiotics fail.

D.diff is a bug that can cause extreme diarrhoea in patients.

Professor Peter Hawkey from Birmingham University’s School of Immunity and Infection told the BBC is having remarkable results.

The first patient Prof Hawkey’s team treated had been in hospital for 100 days.

Within 24 hours of the transplant, the patient was able to walk around the ward.

Liquid faeces works by repopulating the patient’s gut with good bacteria, which fights off the C.diff bugs.

It is administered by placing a tube down the patient’s nose into their stomach.

Prof Hawker said: “It looks like black coffee. They don’t taste it, they don’t vomit. It is very straightforward.

“This is a very nasty disease. In this extreme group, you are looking at a 30% mortality rate – which is a frightening thought.

“We have conservatively saved 20 lives, possibly more.”