At the June 24 Cincinnati Board of Health Meeting, Assistant Health Commissioner Dr. Camille Jones gave an update on the “bedbug issue” and the news wasn’t especially promising:

She said if you compared every month this year to the same month in 2007, the number of complaints has at least doubled, which is very alarming. The proportion of complaints specifically asking for an inspection has been increasing, and that is also alarming for the Health Department. In the beginning the requests were asking for information, and that has changed into asking for inspections; at this point (in June) 75% are asking for inspections.

What this means is that it is reaching the point where the Department will not be able to respond to the complaints with inspections.

As we’ve noted before, there is a bed bug awareness and prevention bill in the Ohio legislature that would fund the state’s education and prevention activities. The budget estimates for Cincinnati’s bed bug inspection program are here.

If our close attention to Cincinnati’s efforts to combat bed bugs seems a little strange to you, let us state the obvious reason: we believe they are breaking ground in bed bug policy making and we want to learn everything about what they are doing and the challenges they face. I remember distinctly the day last year I found out Cincinnati had created a Bed Bug Remediation Commission; that Commission has since become a joint city/county task force which has written an as yet unreleased Strategic Plan to deal with the bed bug epidemic. Interesting things are happening in Cincinnati and we want to know all about them.