Sancti Spíritus/The losses suffered by the home of Yeandris, 29 years old, amount to a quarter of a million pesos, to whom the bedbugs that spread through the city of Sancti Spíritus caused him to lose not only resources, but also time and many hours of sleep . “Yesterday I threw away the three mattresses, which were still pretty good, but there was no way to control those bugs,” he tells 14ymedio.
The martyrdom of Yeandris and his family began at the beginning of December in the neighborhood of Jesús María. “We began to notice that while we were watching television on the living room couch, something was itching our legs,” recalls the man from Sancti Spiritus. “At first we thought they were mosquitoes, but what happened most was when we sat there. When we joined the ends and checked all the folds, the batting and cushions were full of bedbugs.”
The bedbug or bed bug, an insect that feeds on the blood of humans and other animals, has become an undesirable visitor in many Cuban homes, where overcrowding, lack of cleaning products and poverty have multiplied its appearances in the last few years. The outbreaks in provinces such as Santiago de Cuba and Havana have become frequent news in the island’s independent media.
“I knew this was happening, I had heard many stories, but it is another thing to live it,” explains Yeandris. Shortly after describing the bugs on the couch, the family realized that the bed bugs were also in the beds. “My mother’s mattress, the one in my child’s crib and the one I share with my wife, all three were on“, he laments. A computer engineer by profession, the man thought that, as with computer viruses, he only needed to find an antidote and apply it to the infected furniture.
“My mother’s mattress, the one in my child’s crib and the one I share with my wife, all three were ‘on'”
“A neighbor who had gone through the same thing recommended that I go to the polyclinic in my area to ask for help, from there they sent me to the provincial Public Health office and I spent weeks of that rally from one side to the other,” he recalls. “During all that time in my house I couldn’t even sleep, my son had an allergy outbreak due to bedbug bites and some even became infected and caused sores on his skin. “.
Christmas Eve in the Yeandris home was not a time of celebration. “That day in the morning I couldn’t take it anymore and I dismantled the three beds.” A week before, a fumigator recommended by Public Health and paid out of the pocket of the insomniac from Sancti Spiritus, sprayed the entire house and especially the rooms. “We thought that was going to solve the problem but what those bugs did was multiply more.”
On December 24, Yeandris took the three mattresses out to the patio, the family undertook a thorough cleaning and, exhausted, they fell asleep that night on the floor on some blankets. “I thought I wouldn’t have to get there, but nothing killed bedbugs and when you’ve had bad sleep for almost a month, all you want is for the nightmare to end.”
Days later, with the help of another neighbor, he threw the three mattresses in a nearby trash can. There he came across a coverall who, despite the warnings, decided to collect what Yeandris discarded. “I dismantle them, put the wadding in bags and submerge them for days in the river,” the man detailed his method to the astonished Sancti Spiritus resident who recommended that he not carry such a nest of bedbugs. “Then I put the batting in the sun and I can rebuild the mattresses,” he added wittily.
“In total, between the loss of the mattresses that were almost new, what I paid to the fumigator who came twice, the sofa that I also had to throw away and all kinds of remedies that were sold to me and were of no use, everything turned out to be in almost 250,000 pesos”, calculates the affected person. “After experiencing this I have become very paranoid, I no longer want to sit anywhere.”
“After experiencing this I have become very paranoid, I no longer want to sit anywhere”
Yeandris’s obsession is not a symptom that he has lost his mind; in the city of Sancti Spíritus, residents warn each other of places that have fallen under the plague. “You can’t go to the provincial library, the seats are full,” warns an Internet user in a Facebook group that includes residents of the city. “In my neighborhood, a neighbor put her mattress on the street to catch the sun so that the bedbugs would get rid of it and now it turns out that she has infected us all, the block is full.”
In May 2023, a similar alert reached the local media. Osvaldo Gómez Hernández, vice director of surveillance and vector control of the Provincial Center of Hygiene and Epidemiology, recognized the extent of the problem in the province. “It is difficult to eliminate the bed bug but it is not impossible. This allows us to give some home treatments and not have to resort to chemical treatments,” said the specialist in response to citizens’ demands for official intervention to fumigate the neighborhoods.
“I have gone to the polyclinic three times to help me with fumigation, even though I have to pay for it and it is very expensive, but they don’t come,” another affected person denounces in the Sancti Spiritus Facebook group. “I had to burn two mattresses and an armchair, I have been fighting an infestation in my mother’s house for a month and nothing is achieved because the problem is everywhere. You kill 100 bedbugs in the morning and, that same night, in the house of next door, you get 200”.
