PARIS, France
The French government said Tuesday it would host emergency meetings this week to examine surging numbers of reported bedbug cases, which are being increasingly seen as a major potential public health problem.
Bedbugs have in recent weeks
gone from being a subject of potential derision to a contentious political
issue in France,
with aghast citizens reporting seeing the creatures in locations
including trains,
the Paris metro
and cinemas.
The concerns have gained added
weight with France in the throes of hosting the Rugby
World Cup and Paris preparing to welcome athletes and fans from around
the world for the 2024 Olympics.
Two schools -- one in Marseille and
the other in Villefranche-sur-Saone outside Lyon in
southeastern France -- have become infected with bedbugs and have been closed
down for several days to be cleaned out, local authorities said.
The aim of a meeting on
Wednesday, which will see Transport Minister Clement Beaune host transport and
passenger organisations, will be to "quantify the situation and strengthen
the measures", his ministry said.
"We want to inform on the
actions undertaken and act in the service of travellers to reassure and
protect," the ministry said.
An inter-ministerial meeting
will then take place on Friday, government spokesman Olivier Veran told RTL TV,
promising to "rapidly bring answers for the French".
Meanwhile, the head of
President Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance party in the French National Assembly,
Sylvain Maillard, said a cross-party bill would be put forward "at the
beginning of December" to combat the "scourge" of bedbugs.
He said the president's party
and its allies had decided to make the subject a "priority" and urged
the right-wing and hard-left opposition to come up with suggestions for a
cross-party text.
Health Minister Aurelien
Rousseau insisted on France Inter radio there was no "general panic"
over the issue.
"What concerns me is that
people do not get cheated by firms that make them pay 2,000 or 3,000 euros
($2,100 or $3,100)" to rid their houses of bedbugs, he added, denouncing
"abuses" in the pest control sector.
Bedbugs, which had largely
disappeared from daily life by the 1950s, have made a resurgence in recent
decades, mostly due to high population densities and more mass transit.
One-tenth of all French
households are believed to have had a bedbug problem over the past few years,
usually requiring a pest control operation costing several hundreds of euros
that often needs to be repeated.
The blood-sucking insects have
been spotted in the Paris metro, high-speed trains and at Paris's Charles De
Gaulle Airport.
But the individual cases have
not been confirmed by the authorities and RMC TV reported that a probe by Paris
transport operator RATP had found no bedbugs on its services.
Renaissance MP Bruno Studer
said that a priority for the future would be counting the number of bedbugs.
"We do not know today if
there are more bedbugs than in 2019," he said.
In addition to the development
of statistical tools, the text could make it possible to recognise the problem
as "a question of public
health," said his colleague Robin Reda.
"We have wasted six
years. The government has done nothing," said the head of the group of
hard-left France Unbowed MPs Mathilde Panot, adding the
"urgency is to act now" with a national prevention plan, an emergency
fund and the creation of public disinfestation services.
Bedbugs get their name from
their habit of nesting in mattresses, although they can also hide in clothes
and in luggage.
They come out at night to feed
on human blood.
Bedbug bites leave red areas,
blisters or large rashes on the skin, and can cause intense itching or allergic
reactions.
They also often cause
psychological distress, sleeping issues, anxiety and depression.
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