I am sorry that you were hurt when your health professional did not want to continue to visit you due to bed bugs. However, you cannot take that personally. As a home visitor, I not only have to think about the health and well-being of my client but also myself. I am not going to put myself in a position to bring home bed bugs if I don’t have to. I will not do my job well if I am thinking about if a bug is crawling into my bag or not.
Also, to equate AIDS with beg bugs is ignorant. If I had to visit an AIDS patient, I wouldn’t be worried about getting the disease myself just by being in the house. However, as with bed bugs, I can be in the home for 5 mins and bring home a bed bug.
Health care professionals are there to help people but we have lives too and we need to protect ourselves also in the process. For example, if I approach a house and there’s a vicious looking dog that is barking and snarling at me and preventing me from getting to the front door, I won’t go in. I will choose me over the client in this case.
Sorry, if I sound rash but there are always 2 sides to the story.

I get what you’re saying, and understand Tyvek suits may not be a solution for normal home health workers.

I think your idea:

I think some agency or entrepreneur should develop a bonded central BB response team who can prep these locations for treatment and provide for the required logistics.

… is a great one.

I hope the agencies begin to understand that they are at risk even when they do not see bed bugs easily and also when the client is not aware they have them. This still seems to be like the most “dangerous” situation for them, since they might not take precautions in the absence of obvious signs, even if taught to do so.

Parakeets,

I hear you.

Of course, it is easier for home visitors to take home bed bugs than to contract AIDS (and the consequences are not comparable).

But it still seems like something should be worked out. If special teams can provide support with prep and treatment, as Winston suggests, it seems like there could be special nursing teams for such circumstances– perhaps provided with extra training, and paid extra, and given facilities to transition from work to home, so they are less likely to bring the problem home.

I realize this would not mean the regular nurses were “safe” (per my comments to Winston above), but it would at least mean clients were not left high and dry.

I think your experience — I believe you’ve told us before this was an office visit and not a health practitioner coming to your home — is a very problematic one. Health workers (in their own office settings) need to find ways of minimizing the spread of bed bugs. But turning clients away isn’t the solution.

Of all the things that happened to me during my bedbug saga, one of the must hurtfull was when a health professional refused to continue treating me once he found out I had bedbugs.

I have compassion for thus patient whom the visitng nurses won’t see. I’ve been there.