Morocco’s Tanger-Med Port administration initiated the health and environmental vigilance system, after registering the suspicion of the presence of bedbugs on board a passenger ship that arrived from the French port of Marseille.
Identical sources reported that the proactive health monitoring process carried out by the port authorities showed the detection of bedbugs on board this ship, which required the activation of a strict health protocol, which requires carrying out a comprehensive and meticulous sterilization and cleaning process for all components of this ship and its cargo, before receiving passengers and vehicles arriving on board.
The same sources added that this measure comes in the context of the careful monitoring undertaken by the port authorities in order to avoid the introduction of this harmful and rapidly spreading insect, which France is currently experiencing a major outbreak of in a group of major cities, especially in transportation and public places.
The French government is meeting this week to develop an action plan to combat bedbugs, expressing its concern about the massive return of this type of parasite, as bedbugs were spotted in movie theaters, high-speed trains, the Paris metro, and in the waiting area at Roissy Airport.
Bed bugs are small, wingless insects with a reddish-brown color, ranging in size from 4 to 7 mm. They suck human blood and cause severe itching that can worsen to skin irritation in some people.
This insect, which has a high ability to reproduce and spread, also feeds on blood. Only, it must take “regular blood meals” to survive and continue to grow.
Human blood is not the only target of these insects, but they also attack various types of animals, including poultry and other birds, while the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the US Department of Agriculture consider bed bugs a “public health scourge.”
These insects had disappeared from daily life in the 1950s, before they reappeared during the last thirty years in a number of developed countries, due to the increasingly mobile pace of life and the consumer pattern based on buying used goods, in addition to recording resistance to insecticides.