Provide food and medicine to a redheaded insect (11)

I believe the answer is:

caterpillar

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'insect' is the definition.
(thesaurus)

'provide food and medicine to a redheaded' is the wordplay.
'provide food' becomes 'cater' (I've seen this before).
'and' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'medicine' becomes 'pill' (pill is a kind of medicine).
'redheaded' becomes 'r' (this could be a standard abbreviation I've not previously seen).
'cater'+'pill'+'a'+'r'='CATERPILLAR'

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(Other definitions for caterpillar that I've seen before include "sort of grub" , "Tiny creature" , "Lepidopteran larva" , "potential beauty?" , "Moth/ butterfly larva" .)

I've seen this clue in the Sydney Morning Herald.

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