Ireland fans risk bring a bed bugs back with them when they return from the World Cup, an expert in pest eradication has said.
The French capital is suffering from a plague of bed bugs at the moment and President Emmanuel Macron has been forced to intervene.
Bed bug eradication expert David Cain said lack of awareness means many tourists are simply unaware of what to look for.
“If you want to prevent that happening, you need to start with an education drive now,” he told Moncrieff.
“It should have actually been started 10 years ago but everyone ignored the requests to do it.”
Prevention is always better than cure and Mr Cain said people should always check for bed bugs before sleeping in a bed that isn’t their own.
“When you travel and stay away from your home, before you sleep in that bed, spend three minutes looking at it,” he suggested.
“Lift the mattress, look through the frame of the bed and you’re looking for live samples, skins and faecal traces.
“If you find them, you’re not going to sleep in the bed and you can avoid contact in the first place.”
An expert looking for bed bugs.If you do find bed bugs, Mr Cain said it is very much a “fixable” problem but advised contacting a professional to let them deal with it.
“Someone inadvertently killed one of their neighbours in London the other year,” he said.
“They’d purchased something off the internet, used it inappropriately in the building and hadn’t realised it was going to permeate through to the adjoining neighbours, who were in bed, and they didn’t wake up.”
Stigma
He also said embarrassment stops people from talking about their experiences and raising awareness.
“We incorrectly apply this social stigma and pressure and that’s what helps keep the problem spreading and getting out of control,” he said.
“People don’t want to say, ‘That was horrific, I had bed bugs, this is what I did to fix it, this is the information I learnt’ because they’re too worried people will go, ‘Oh, you must be dirty if you had bed bugs.’”
Main image: A bed bug.
