CBC News
WINNIPEG, Canada — Winnipeg paramedics are worried about the growing bedbug problem and want the city to list all buildings known to be infested.
Chris Broughton, president of the Manitoba Government and General Employees’ Union Local 911, said paramedics need to know more about the places they are going into.
They want the locations of buildings with bedbugs to be public information and posted the same way as restaurant inspection results. That way, paramedics can take precautions, Broughton said.
“Personally, I’ve spent four hours with a patient before they thought to tell me that the apartment we were in at the time was infested with bedbugs,” he said.
Knowing a building had been cited for bedbugs wouldn’t affect how paramedics treat patients or whether they go into a building in the first place.
But it would allow them to be aware, so they can decontaminate the equipment and ambulances after the visit.
“We simply don’t have the resources to be able to protect ourselves for each and every call and decontaminate our equipment after each and every call,” Broughton said.
Knowing which buildings are known to have bedbugs will enable the crews to focus their decontamination on those calls.
Broughton is working with the city on what form the bedbug notification might take.
There is no word on if, or when, such a system will be put into place.
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Copyright 2011 CBC
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