The Fermanagh Herald reports that Erne Hospital in Enniskillen had 28 call-outs from pest control in 2008, including those for bed bugs; facilities in the Western Health and Social Care Trust had 128 pest control call-outs in total.  (A small percentage of these were routine visits.)

A Western Trust spokesperson said,

“Visits are often to deal with one-off sightings of pests.”

I hope “one-off sightings” of bed bugs are not treated as “one-off sightings,” since it is so rare to see even one bed bug, and it may represent the presence of many more.

The spokesperson continued,

The most common types of pests dealt with were mice, rats, fleas, silverfish and bedbugs. Pest control specialists carry out treatments following each visit as appropriate. They also provide specialist advice to the Trust following the contract visits, for example, in relation to minor repairs to the building, reviewing housekeeping/cleaning arrangements and monitoring.

Contractors also had to treat bedbugs at staff accommodation at Altnagelvin Hospital as well as in areas of the Erne Hospital and Tyrone and Fermanagh Hospital.

Emphasis mine.

This is not the first report from Northern Ireland hospitals and medical residences. Or from Northern Ireland, where lorry drivers identified the problem as something they were bringing in via ferries from Scotland and the Continent. Similar Posts:

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We just heard of a hospital in Portland, Oregon which is infested with bed bugs in the main lobby and surrounding offices. Now news comes from Kerry’s Eye Online that the 63-bed Listowel Community Hospital in Listowel, County Kerry, Ireland is infested. The infestation was discovered after staff and patients complained about bed bug bites:

According to the HSE, 36 patients remain in the 63-bed hospital but a “small number” of patients were discharged earlier this week, and some were sent to surrounding nursing homes.

Extra home support services have been rolled out for the coming weeks while the hospital is being fumigated, a spokesman said.

Staff and patients had complained of unexplained insect bites a number of weeks ago, and following further investigations by an Incident Control Team with Microbiology and Dermatology services, an influx of bed bugs (Cimex Lectularius) was reported to the HSE on Monday.

The hospital is being treated.

I hope precautions were taken at the hospital so that those sent home do not infest their homes with bed bugs as well.

Read the full story in Kerry’s Eye.
And another from the Irish Times.Similar Posts:

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This, from a major national Irish paper, sounds familiar.

Bedbugs are back . . . in swarming numbers

Monday June 18 2007, The Irish Independent

INFESTATIONS of bedbugs are on the rise throughout Ireland due to the rapid growth in foreign travel and rising temperatures.

As the unwelcome guests return in droves, pest-controllers are called to hotels, family homes, guesthouses, B&Bs and, on occasion, hospitals.

In the warmer weather between February and October, bedbug call-outs are as high as those for rats and mice. “We are getting thousands of bedbug call-outs a year. There has been a phenomenal increase over the past decade,” Michael O’Mahoney of pest-control company Rentokil said.

One of the main reasons behind the bedbug explosion in Western Europe and the US over the past few years is increased travel in and out, according to the exterminators.

In Ireland, people have been visiting pharmacies and doctors seeking help for rashes and skin irritation caused by the bugs.

“When people go to the doctor first they sometimes think they have scabies,” Mr O’Mahoney said.

Bedbugs, which feed on human blood during the night, can lay up to 500 eggs over in two months.

The flat insects are dark reddish-brown. Adults stretch to around 6mm in length. They can be found lurking on bedsheets, in mattresses, behind peeling wallpaper, between floorboards, in plugs, light switches, behind mattress buttons or headboards, in bedside lockers and in radios.

Mr O’Mahoney said the bugs infested not just shoddy flats but also the “poshest hotels” as they “don’t heed boundaries”.

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You can click here to see a map of the last 90 or so visitors to the site. It will look different from what I describe below, because I am writing about what I saw there about 4-5 hours ago. Now it’s almost midnight in New York, and the Aussies are starting to surf in.

For those of you who don’t know, webpages can tell where you’re coming from (though not very specifically). They know the location of your ISP. For most people, this comes up as somewhere near where they live, though it’s not always precise and sometimes it’s just the country. It also tells the webmaster what internet browser you use (Go Firefox!) and whether you like Macs or Windows machines. No, I do not know your name, or where you live, don’t worry!

This may all seem very “meta,” so far, but we know that our readership consists of four kinds of people:

a) People who have, or think they have, or recently had, bed bugs.
b) People whose work makes them concerned about bed bugs (pest control professionals, entomologists, politicians, landlords, hotel managers, social service agencies, government officials, are just some sectors that I have heard from).
c) People who have heard about bed bugs and are concerned, and want to know more.

I think that group (a) is in the majority, and although most people don’t comment, most commenters fit in group a. In any case, the Bedbugger.com readership is a map of bed bug concern, and you’d be pretty safe betting its a map of where bed bugs are popping up–with the caveat, of course, that our site pops up more in US search engines than those abroad, and also that our readers are overwhelmingly English-speakers, though we have dreams of breaking down those linguistic barriers!

This is where the last 89 readers were reading the blog (circa 6:30 this evening):

1. San Diego, California, United States
2. Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom
3. Walden, New York, United States
4. Long Island City, New York, United States
5. New York, New York, United States
6. Plattekill, New York, United States
7. Hull, Quebec, Canada
8. Durant, Iowa, United States
9. Miamiville, Ohio, United States
10. Gibraltar
11. Calgary, Alberta, Canada
12. Boston, Massachusetts, United States
13. Humble, Texas, United States
14. Germantown, Maryland, United States
15. Rowland Heights, California, United States
16. New York, New York, United States
17. New York, New York, United States
18. Hadley, Kentucky, United States
19. Buffalo, New York, United States
20. Hveragerði, Arnessysla, Iceland
21. Pine Falls, Manitoba, Canada
22. Livonia, Michigan, United States
23. Bayside, New York, United States
24. Woodhaven, New York, United States
25. Denver, Colorado, United States
26. New York, New York, United States
27. United States
28. Waterloo, Quebec, Canada
29. Los Angeles, California, United States
30. Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
31. Santa Maria, California, United States
32. Beamsville, Ontario, Canada
33. Kansas City, Missouri, United States
34. Corona, New York, United States
35. Barker, Texas, United States
36. Readville, Massachusetts, United States
37. Palo Alto, California, United States
38. Salt Lake City, Utah, United States
39. Mill Valley, California, United States
40. Ridgewood, New York, United States
41. Mehama, Oregon, United States
42. San Francisco, California, United States
43. Feeding Hills, Massachusetts, United States
44. Swedesburg, Iowa, United States
45. Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
46. West New York, New Jersey, United States
47. Lancaster, Blackpool, United Kingdom
48. New York, New York, United States
49. Miami, Florida, United States
50. Anaheim, California, United States
51. Harrow, Harrow, United Kingdom
52. Wilsonville, Oregon, United States
53. Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
54. Forest Hill, Ontario, Canada
55. Wayne, New Jersey, United States
56. Kecskemét, Bacs-Kiskun, Hungary
57. Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada
58. Short Hills, New Jersey, United States
59. Seattle, Washington, United States
60. Jackson, Mississippi, United States
61. Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States
62. Secaucus, New Jersey, United States
63. Long Island City, New York, United States
64. United States
65. Tranbjerg, Arhus, Denmark
66. Naples, Florida, United States
67. San Francisco, California, United States
68. Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
69. Gainesville, Florida, United States
70. Edmond, Oklahoma, United States
71. Hempstead, New York, United States
72. Everett, Massachusetts, United States
73. United States
74. United States
75. São Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
76. Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
77. Bismarck, North Dakota, United States
78. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
79. Downers Grove, Illinois, United States
80. United States
81. Bend, Oregon, United States
82. Henderson, Nevada, United States
83. Montréal, Quebec, Canada
84. Sunnyvale, California, United States
85. Arlington, Texas, United States
86. United States
87. New York, New York, United States
88. Fairfax, Virginia, United States
89. Rochester, New York, United States

You might expect that most of these people came from the bed bug hot spots. We get lots of readers from Chicago, Boston, NYC, San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto. So it’s surprising that 89 people came from such a wide variety of places:

68 from at least 33 states (only 12 of these from NYC, San Francisco or Boston);
11 from 5 provinces in Canada;
4 from 4 cities in the UK (none of them London);
1 person each from: Hungary, Ireland, Denmark, Brazil, Iceland, and Gilbraltar.

In New York state, 10 of the 17 visitors were from NYC. And of the 10 in NYC, 60% were in Queens, where, unlike Staten Island, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Manhattan, each neighborhood has its own name used for the purposes of the postal service: Ridgewood, Corona, Long Island City, Woodhaven, Bayside, New York, are all in Queens, and part of NYC. Remember the Queens Gazette speculating that Queens was the “ground zero for NYC’s bed bugs? Well, I am still not sure it’s true, but it seems plausible: we certainly have a lot of Bedbuggers in Queens.

I peeked at the traffic report for the site because I have a geeky side and I find it interesting to know where you’re coming from. However, looking at it can tell us something about the bed bug problem. This is not a scientific study, but just a snapshot of our site’s traffic does tell you who’s worried about bed bugs (and, we can assume, many are worried because they have bed bugs).

Most of those cities were not capitals or the biggest cities in their regions or countries. A small percentage are from those places you think are hot spots. It should serve as a warning sign that bed bugs, like Bedbuggers, are everywhere, and way more spread out than you thought.Similar Posts:

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