So, what’s in the water in Ohio, hmm?
The Columbus Dispatch reports that the Franklin County Board of Health
is establishing an interagency bedbug task force for central Ohio.
Franklin County—population 1,095,662, 37.5% multi-unit housing, 13.1% living below the poverty line—will have a bed bug task force before New York City does.
How?
In a previous Columbus Dispatch report about the bed bug problem in Franklin County, Community Environmental Health Supervisor, Charlie Broschart, was quoted as follows:
“We need to step it up.”
Simple, isn’t it?
After a co-worker attended a conference on bedbugs in Cincinnati, Broschart said, they spent Monday morning brainstorming ways to make people more aware of the problem.
The Cincinnati bed bug conference… of course. Like Broschart’s colleague, we’re inspired by the work of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. (The brainstorming session in our city remains an ambition, alas.)
Oh, and guess what was handed out at the Cincinnati bed bug conference? Copies of the Cincinnati/Hamilton County Joint Bed Bug Task Force Strategic Plan. We strongly recommend that you read this document if you are interested in bed bug policy development.
So, a direct path from the work in Cincinnati and Hamilton County to the good will and dedication of a public health department in central Ohio.
Nice.
Note: there are several interesting things in the Columbus Dispatch article—every firehouse in Cincinnati is infested?—notably, a claim by a landlord tenant lawyer that Columbus landlords
are spending a combined $1.5 million on bedbugs a year.
There is also the unfortunate statement that bed bugs have “scuttled back in” with “international travelers”—this is woefully bad for various obvious and not so obvious reasons but, more important, it’s unsupported by research, and I really wish people, reporters, scientists, would stop reflexively saying it.
Nobugs wrote about the role of Dr. Susan Jones of Ohio State University here.
These pages may be of related interest:
- Franklin County, Ohio (update) and Columbus Public Health (asking for trouble)
- Franklin County October Bed Bug Summit, notes from OPCA
- The Central Ohio Bed Bug Task Force: an interview with Paul Wenning
- Bed bug tracking in Columbus: “a fraction of the actual bed bug infestations”
- Central Ohio Bed Bug Summit on November 10
I think the NYC officials are just not imaginative enough.
The reaction in Franklin County seems to have a lot to do with being able to see the warning signs, being able to react to a problem before it is enormous and out of hand:
County officials held an educational summit on bedbugs today that brought together social workers, landlords, pest controllers and school representatives. Health and code-enforcement officials came from state, county and city governments.
Guests from Cincinnati arrived and had attendees squirming in their seats with horror stories.
Every fire station in Cincinnati has bedbugs, the city has spent more than $10,000 on protective suits for employees and a room in an assisted-living complex had 30,000 bedbugs in one room, said Ken Sharkey of the Cincinnati Health Department.
“He got my attention,” Clinton Township Fire Chief John Harris said. “I thought it was scary.”
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Why don’t NYC officials see the writing on the wall? Why aren’t they listening to reports from those who know, the way the Franklin County folks are?
I’m not sure, Nobugs. Your guess is as good as mine.
I think they’re just people, and like the people we know who are exposed to bedbugs or are the friends, relatives, coworkers, etc. of those who are exposed, some people are just incapable of empathy — or like we see sometimes in some of the people who are not allergic, they just don’t get it.
We hear what some council member staff tell people who call, for example, and some of it is astonishing. So, some don’t care, some are just not aware, and others are aware and care but think their hands are tied. It’s going to be our job to educate them and persuade them, which is a daunting prospect, actually; I’m not sure how we’re going to do that but that is what we’re going to have to do.
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