Come on, it’ll be fun.
Photo by caruba via flickr.
Guess who was at the New York City Council hearing?
In what I’m calling nothing less than a master stroke, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene brought out none other than Dr. Bobby Corrigan. This could not have been more calculated to impress us. Remember when we said that we wanted a resource exactly like the city’s rat information portal (RIP!)? And that a bed bug expert—someone analogous to rodentologist Dr. Corrigan, our city’s “rat czar”—should be part of the package? And we asked, how much? And how bad does it have to get?
Well, DOHMH was busy sending all the right signals on Tuesday.
This is what (I remember) Dr. Edgar Butts, the Department of Health’s lead witness, said about a possible bed bug management training program for professionals:
If it were modeled on the Rat Academy, then it would be very successful.
The Rat Academy:
The goal of the New York City Rodent Control Academy (NYCRCA) is to provide a highly focused and standardized approach to managing rodent populations through Integrated Pest Management (IPM). After completing this course, pest control professionals will be able to more effectively manage rodent populations, because they will have a better understanding of the biology, behavior and habitat of rodents, contributing factors to infestation, effective ways of evaluating site-specific responses and strategies, and effective communication strategies with the public to achieve lasting change and improvements.
The problem is, the rat academy had CDC funding, 600K. It took years to get off the ground and lots and lots of money.
Still.
Maybe now is a good time for you to watch the video we linked to in that previous post? Don’t worry, it’s nothing you haven’t seen on the subway tracks before. But it’s going to be hard to explain why we want this so badly (for bed bugs) if you don’t see this yourself. It’s a video featuring Dr. Corrigan and a NYC Department of Health inspector, Michael Mills.
It is part of this great Time article about the city’s rat indexing program. Christine Gorman tells us all we need to know:
For years, the city government has dealt with rodent complaints on an individual basis. Citizens called up the health department, which sent out inspectors and, if need be, exterminators, who got rid of the immediate problem. But that left rats in nearby nests untouched, allowing them to repopulate the area.
What was needed was a more coordinated effort — one that targeted all the nests on a block or in a neighborhood. Just as important, the strategy had to involve all the relevant government agencies.
Emphasis added.
Did you watch the video?
See what we mean? If we had just two people in our city like Dr. Corrigan and Mr. Mills working on bed bugs, we might be able to make a dent in the numbers.
Someone like Dr. Corrigan, of course. Dr. Corrigan himself didn’t seem too happy talking about bed bugs on Tuesday!
We’ll revisit the rats. I don’t know about you but I hope we’re slowly leaving the realm of wishful thinking.
And we’ll parse the hearing in installments, okay? It was 4+ hours! We have lots to talk about.
These pages may be of related interest:
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