Return of an old menace

As if there aren’t already plenty of hassles when it comes to travelling, here comes another worry to plague us.

THE alarms first went off in France in September when the Paris deputy mayor warned of a serious bed bug infestation in the city, declaring “no one is safe”.

The French Union Chamber of Insect Control reported a 65% increase in pest control visits for the insect across the country compared with last year.

Scary as that sounded, I wasn’t too bugged as I have no plans to visit Paris, which is pretty far from where I am planning to go next month: Busan, South Korea.

But within a few weeks, news reports were coming fast and furious on infestations breaking out in the UK, South Korea, Hong Kong and now even Singapore.

Bed bugs feed on blood and humans are their preferred food source; when they bite, they leave red, itchy marks. While they aren’t known to spread disease, the bites can cause an allergic reaction or a severe skin reaction in some people.

These small, reddish-brown insects, about the size of an apple seed, hide in just about every part of a bed – cracks and crevices, box springs, headboards, frames – and are nocturnal feeders so our warm sleeping bodies are just perfect for their meal time.

Bed bugs have actually been sucking on humans for thousands of years but modern pesticides helped to eliminate them. Unfortunately, global warming might have played a part in the insect’s comeback with a vengeance.

Wired.co.uk quotes Jean-Michel Bérenger, a French entomologist who co-founded the National Institute for the Study and Fight Against Bed Bugs in 2018, as saying that heat accelerates a bed bug’s life cycle and September and October have been particularly hot months, about 4.5°C above normal.

“When the temperature inside your house is 25°C to 26°C, it takes only five days for bed bug eggs to hatch. In normal conditions, when the temperature is around 20°C, it takes 10 days,” he said.

He added that the current plague of bed bugs is also a result of the massive number of people constantly on the move, which allows the insects to spread easily. Hence, the bugs aren’t just found on beds but have found their way to planes, hotels, trains and even hospitals.

Long before the current global bed bug panic, I was already well aware of the horrors and stress a bed bug infestation can cause thanks to Sunday Star’s in-depth reporting on the issue in August 2017 (“A problem bugging Malaysians”, Aug 13, 2017; online at bit.ly/47bQHn4).

The newspaper interviewed pest exterminators, entomologists, Health Ministry authorities and victims.

Among the interviewees was former mStar editor Zainal Azhar Mohamed who shared his year-long battle with bed bugs that he believed started in a hotel in Vietnam and only ended with his family moving out of their rented home.

A musty smell alerted him to the presence of the bugs as well as black marks on his mattress, which are the bug’s fecal matter.

“All the sprays and pesticides were ineffective. I mixed Clorox with hot water and sprayed it all over my house, I used natural remedies such as soursop leaves and soursop fruits, but it all did not work.”

No one was spared; his children would cry at night from the bites and Zainal Azhar would have nightmares about them.

The infestation was so severe he could see the bed bugs in the crevices of the wall sockets in the room.

He engaged a pest control company, which quoted him RM1,200 for one room but could not guarantee that they could exterminate the insects.

“They can guarantee results for mosquito, ant and rat infestations but not for bed bugs,” he said.

After months of sleepless nights, Zainal Azhar made the decision to move out.

Other interviewees had similar horror stories of being practically eaten out of their homes. And that’s what scares me the most.

I know my house is bed bug-free since we enjoy peaceful nights and the only itches we get are from the occasional mosquito bite.

But I will be travelling a bit: I’m off to Penang tomorrow and staying in an Airbnb and then will be South Korea-bound next month, so I am somewhat nervous about catching the bug and bringing it home.

Although there is an embarrassing stigma to bed bugs infestations the experts say it has nothing to do with cleanliness or hygiene.

“The bug just needs to be brought in by a host,” says urban and molecular entomologist Dr Abdul Hafiz Ab Majid, an associate professor at Universiti Sains Malaysia’s School of Biological Sciences.

The vermin are cunning hitchhikers and can latch on to our persons and belongings if we are unlucky to be in a place that is infested, like a cinema or on public transportation.

They have also become harder to kill as they have developed more resistance towards certain pesticides by developing harder cuticles.

So far, there are no reports of severe outbreaks in popular tourist destinations like Penang but our hot and humid weather is actually ideal for them to breed faster, according to Dr Abdul Hafiz.

South Korea is taking the outbreak so seriously, it has embarked on a four-week campaign to eradicate the bugs from hotels, bath houses, university dorms, and train stations across the country, reports CNN.

It’s understandable the government is up in arms because past extermination campaigns kept the country practically bed bug-free, with just nine infestations being reported to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention since 2014.

Seoul city government has launched a new “Bed Bug Reporting and Management System” and a “Zero Bed Bugs City, Seoul” initiative that will inspect 3,175 lodging facilities, bath houses and saunas.

So far, there are no reports on the situation in Busan and I can only hope the hotel I have booked is bug-free.

While my fellow travellers and I can take a bit of cold comfort – literally – that the winter temperature may impede the bug’s proliferation, we are learning how to protect ourselves from it while in Busan.

Luckily there is a lot of helpful advice available.

One way is to spray a safe but effective pesticide on our luggage and let it dry to leave a residue to deter the bugs jumping from other luggage when in storage at the airport, planes or hotels.

We should also inspect the beds and bedding for telltale signs after checking into our rooms. There are also other safety measures to take post-holiday listed in this feature article in The Star: bit.ly/star_bedbugs.

So now, apart from the many things that can ruin a holiday like flight delays, cancellations, disease outbreaks, bad weather caused by climate change, wars, natural disasters, badly behaved airline passengers, pickpockets, and our plunging ringgit, I have added bed bugs to the list.

Pity my travel insurance is silent on that.

The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.