Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite (Even if They're Back With a Vengeance!)

     

Amelia Harrison had checked in late to the swanky hotel near London. A business manager, she’d spent the day at a work conference and was exhausted.

But despite this, she had a restless night – ‘at one point I remember feeling something on my face but brushed it away sleepily,’ she says. ‘Thank goodness I didn’t turn the light on.’

For when she woke in the morning and pulled back the covers, she found a little brown cockroach-like bug about the size of a ladybird on the sheets.

‘Something made me lift the pillow and the sheet and I found the mattress crawling with them,’ says Amelia. ‘I shuddered with horror – I knew immediately what they were; bed bugs.’

She called reception but says hotel staff had no idea what to do. ‘They sent me to another room for a shower. I also had to take my luggage to the room with me, no doubt spreading the infestation. It wasn’t until Rentokil arrived two hours later and told the hotel my room must be fumigated, together with the rooms above, below and either side, that I felt I was starting to get any advice – though it was hardly reassuring.

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‘I had to throw away some of my belongings and they took away the rest of my luggage to fumigate it and told me to check my body for bites twice a day for the next two weeks.

‘I had to go shopping for clothes, makeup and underwear. It all happened in front of other delegates and I felt humiliated.

‘That night, after I’d checked into another hotel, the bites started to appear on my face and neck. The following morning, hundreds of red lumps that were sensitive to water turned into a rash – I looked like I had acne. I had to leave the conference and went to my doctor who prescribed a steroid cream to ease the inflammation.’

But Amelia’s bites slowly worsened, becoming incredibly painful – especially with any contact with water – and two days later they were large, raised spots that looked like chicken pox.

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‘I couldn’t go to work for a week, I was so embarrassed,’ she recalls. ‘I felt unclean, I didn’t know whether they’d given me a disease or laid eggs in my hair. My boyfriend was paranoid that I would introduce bed bugs to our home, even though Rentokil assured me there was no risk.’

A year later her face is still marked by tiny red scars.

Bed bugs are a problem we tend to associate with the poor hygiene of yesteryear. In the late 1880s, an estimated 75 per cent of households were affected, but by the outbreak of World War II, that figure had dwindled to 25 per cent, thanks to the introduction of powerful insecticides.

However, it seems they are returning with a vengeance – statistics from London and the Midlands show that infestations increased three-fold over the past decade.

It’s a global problem; in New York last summer infestations reached epidemic levels, affecting hundreds of apartment blocks and offices including Time Warner, Saatchi & Saatchi and retailer Abercrombie & Fitch.

Resistance to insecticides and the increase in international travel are chiefly to blame, say experts – significantly, there are corridors of infestation that radiate out from airports such as Heathrow and Gatwick.

There are other factors, says bed-bug extermination expert David Cain.

Bed bugs spread on clothes, bags and in furniture when it is moved – ‘anywhere that people exist, particularly where they sit or lie down’.

The rise in weekend markets is also to blame, says Ian Burgess, director of the British Medical Entomology Centre in Cambridge.

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October 6, 2010