The article suggests hospitals as a source of some recent bed bug infestations in Swansea, South Wales:

Marc Everitt, the owner of Swansea-based pest control firm Pest-Ex, said: “No-one is safe – bedbugs don’t go by postcode and they can affect anyone. We have seen a massive increase recently.”

Mr Everitt said he had also dealt with a number of infestations that had broken out after people had stayed in hospitals.

“We’ve had cases where elderly people have returned from hospital and have suddenly found that they’ve got an infestation,” he revealed.

“It’s difficult to prove a direct link. But the evidence suggests that that’s the place the bugs are being brought back from.”

He added: “The problem is that even if you don’t have them, you can catch them off your neighbours and so they spread very quickly and very easily.”

Watch the horror as bed bugs cross the UK and Ireland via our Clustrmap of readers’ locations.

Anyone planning a return from the hospital might do well to follow some of the recommendations in our travel FAQs for not bringing bed bugs home: here, and if you are pretty sure you were in a place that had bed bugs, then also read this.

Yes, people staying in hospitals often have much more serious things to worry about than bringing bed bugs home, and it’ a shame they have to think about this as well as staph infections, and whatever they went to the hospital for in the first place. I can only imagine having to deal with bed bugs after a serious illness, injury, or surgery: prepping for treatment, exposure to pesticides, the cost — what a nightmare.

We have sometimes heard people on the Bedbugger Forums consider whether they got their bed bugs during a hospital visit. In related news, this article details a bed bug infestation in a Canadian pediatric unit, and this article mentions how Cincinnati’s Pamela Mackey came home from a hospital, opened an envelope they’d given her, and found a bed bug inside.

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First, the journalist Judith Woods says of some bed bug victims:

The lawyer got rid of her bed, both mattress and frame, which ideally anyone with an infestation should do.

Wrong! Tossing such items out is unnecessary, since a Pest Control Operator (PCO) can treat them. Moreover, throwing them away (even labeled and sealed) makes it very likely someone else will pick them up and use them. You’d be surprised how eager others are to bring them home, or sell them secondhand (beware the Car Boot Sales, my British friends). In so many cases, you cannot tell from looking at the items that they are infested. If you’re in a multi-unit building or an attached house, your neighbors may even take them, meaning they can later come back to you.

Similarly, Woods suggests,

Bed linen can be washed at the highest possible temperature – but [PCO Ben Knorton of Rentokil] advises throwing it out.
“I’ve seen sheets literally moving with the sheer number of bedbugs under them,” he says. “In that situation you really need to take drastic action.”

Well, if the bed is moving under the weight of bed bugs, perhaps that’s right. But washing on hot and drying on hot are a better idea in most cases. The above statement implies otherwise. I would only throw out sheets, or a bed and frame, if the PCO advised it. And then I would get them to help (with the mattress and frame) to ensure it was carefully done.

We’re also told of the same afflicted lawyer’s case,

Her room was then sealed and sprayed with insecticide three times over as many weeks.

Does this mean the room was sealed and left for three weeks, meaning no one was sleeping there? If so, the insecticide is not likely to work. Bed bugs need to be lured out to cross the poison and die.

Thanks to reader Fedupandparanoid, in the UK, who wrote me an email to alert me to this article and the issues mentioned above.

She also had this to say:

The article was nearly a full page on the Health on Monday page, and headlined ‘Don’t let the bedbugs bite,’ but I was very dissapointed at the tone of the article and take issue with some of the information contained in it. For some reason the journalist writing had called in Rentokil to check her house because she was so worried about the general rise in bedbugs. She didn’t appear to have any reason for suspecting bedbugs other than that there is a 500-fold increase in cases in London. Rentokil, who she called in, are at the very expensive end of the pest control market and they will be rubbing their hands in glee if they can charge good money to go in and inspect middle class people’s homes for no reason other than there is a general increase.

In fairness, the article did mention signs you can look for, like blood spots and fecal stains, bites in a row and did mention what a bedbug looks like, also the problems with hotels, but they seemed to miss an opportunity of really educating people. The journalist to her ‘great relief received a clean bill of health’ for her beds and although I wouldn’t wish bedbugs on anyone it would have carried more weight if she had actually had them or knew someone who had. There was nothing really about the terrible trauma and life disruption that people go through just a few jokey comments about what the neighbours would think.

Fedupandparanoid also said,

I just feel so annoyed that a paper like the Daily Telegraph - respected for it’s journalism - can make such a hash of a good opportunity. I realise journalists have to write articles that people want to read but there seemed no research and no substance to the article at all.

Yes. I agree with Fedup that we have come to expect more. At least the British press are covering the issue–getting people to talk about bed bugs is the first step.

In other news, in one of the few places that has gone beyond talking about bed bugs, Cincinnati emergency personnel are concerned about catching bed bugs when they go to help the city’s residents, ABC9 (WCPO.com) reports.

Firefighters, police, and health workers are encountering bed bugs in their work. And in the circumstances, where people are in danger, personnel don’t generally have time to worry about whether a place is infested before they go in.

Cincinnati Fire District Chief Ronald J. Texter says they’re working on a plan so crews won’t bring them back to the firehouse.

“The difficulty for us is that we can’t go into a house, survey it first, find out whether or not there’s bedbugs and then take precautions by putting on a Tyvex suit or something like that, like an exterminator would do.”

Texter said the department is concerned about the growing bedbug problem. The bugs are so small, sometimes you can’t see them.

“We’ve also had hospitals call and tell us that the patient, when they started treating them, they found bedbugs and they call us and let us know as a precaution that the patient had bedbugs,” Texter said.

This is good news: hospital staff are tuned in to the problem and the dangers of personnel exposed to it. The bad news is if patients are carrying bed bugs on their person, they must be suffering from very bad infestations.

If a firefighter walks into a home with bedbugs, they’re being encouraged to clean their equipment as soon as they return to the station.

Chief Texter admits that’s easier said than done.

“When you make 15 to 20 runs a day and you can’t stop everytime and take everything out, clean it, and put it all back and make sure there’s no bedbugs.”

The Cincinnati Fraternal Order of Police says officers have similar concerns.

Both departments are working on a plan to deal with the problem.

The fire department is educating personnel in addition to hiring an exterminator.

“If we do have a problem with bedbugs, we already have a pest control operator under contract to treat the infestation.”

Cincinnati emergency personnel, like the Cincinnati health department, are being very proactive about bed bugs. That the police and fire departments are talking to pest control operators in advance of detecting an infestation, is a very good thing. Lots can be done–not only in terms of educating personnel about signs of bed bugs and what to do if one is exposed, but also in terms of developing a protocol for searching the firehouse, for example, or where to store clothing that may be exposed.

And make no mistake: bed bugs are spreading via the same routes everywhere else. The difference is, people in Cincinnati are not afraid to talk about it. It’s the first step to making things better.

Click to read or watch the ABC9 video from Cincinnati.

Click here to read the Daily Telegraph article.

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Advice from private pest control experts, freely offered on the radio and in the national press, has included avoiding sitting down on public transport, and a suggestion that you strip naked in your entrance hall on return from work, before washing all your clothes at very high temperatures. The consequences of not calling in the experts are, of course, dire. “I’m often called out to people with more than 150 bites,” claimed one pest controller.

In your service we carried out a thorough investigation and have become suspicious. Have you been bitten? Do you know anyone who has? And isn’t it rather a coincidence that North America has just recently been enduring a similar epidemic? In New York, newspapers report the story of 21-year-old Michelle Hopkins, who says she was nearly eaten alive by bedbugs in her college dorm. And a popular children’s TV show, My Bedbugs, has gone nationwide across the US. Too uncanny for words.

My map says yes, they have them over there too. This confirms the experiences of our readers from across the pond.

I realize that David Cain’s and Rentokil’s Savvas Othon’s warnings in the recent British press sound alarmist. I realize also that News Of the World is may not be the source of the most balanced scientific journalism.

However, bed bugs really are back, and they really are bad. Not always that bad, and not yet everywhere, but you really do not want them spreading further.

So, my British friends, please do drop a comment over at the New Statesman, and let them know what’s up with bed bugs in the UK. The “My Bedbugs” reference in the article (read on) says they’re joking.

But let’s play along, shall we?

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(Photo by News of the World)

It is entitled, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers!”

NOTW journalist Sophy Ridge quotes David Cain (who has participated in our Forums) as saying that his calls for bed bugs are up 500% compared with last year’s calls.

Similarly,

Rentokil boss Savvas Othon said: “Outbreaks are on the rise. The number of people travelling and the current warm UK temperatures are helping the bugs to spread and thrive.

“You can easily pick them up on buses, in airport lounges and from other people’s dry cleaning. Even car boot sales make it worse as people buy furniture which may already be infested.”

Experts advise vacuuming mattresses and cleaning regularly to keep the bugs at bay. But if you’ve got them, there’s only one thing for it.

Who you gonna call? …pest busters.

(Car boot sales are “flea markets” in the US.)

This article is bound to reach even more people who have not heard of bed bugs. Unfortunately, NOTW is, as those not familiar with it can see, a fairly sensationalist tabloid. I hope that people in the UK will nevertheless seriously consider the facts contained in this story, and will consider being more cautious about used items, and also consider pressuring their government to take this issue seriously.

There is certainly no need to panic: I still use dry cleaners and sit on subway trains (gasp!) though the NYC epidemic is surely as bad as that in London. However, bed bugs are surely being spread in all these ways and more. Most people don’t consider this until they have them; those who do fear getting them over and over, since the rest of the world seems completely oblivious.

Articles in the popular press are a good way to spread the word. Hopefully this article will help start more conversations about bed bugs in the UK.

Yes, I said UK: despite the NOTW’s banner referencing “England,” the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish elsewhere in the UK (as well as their neighbors in the Republic of Ireland) are also battling bed bugs.

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