There is a whole age bracket in the developed Western world that is coming in contact with bed bugs for the first time in their lives. The Baby Boomers of the Fifties and Sixties and their offspring have never seen bed bugs in their own countries, because bed bugs were practically exterminated in the West in the 1940′s and 1950′s through the widespread use of DDT to kill insects in general when the inner city ghettos were being cleared up after the Second World War. A comparable course of action went on in the United States.

The resurgence of the population of bed bugs over the last fifteen years has been blamed on the increased number of people going on long-haul holidays and the enlarged amount of immigration from Asia and Africa. It is not that people carry the bed bugs home on their bodies, but bedbugs may have laid eggs in the travellers’ clothing or the bedbugs may have taken refuge in the suitcases.