Paris (AFP)

Severe itching, insomnia, risk of infection: poorly housed Wednesday in Paris against bed bugs, this "plague" which they believe infests emergency accommodation and precarious habitats they occupy.

"We scratch all day, wounds open and diseases happen," says Philippe, 62 years. Without housing for eight months following an eviction, he was housed in hotels of 115 (emergency number for the homeless), "infested with bed bugs," he says.

According to the association Right to Housing (DAL), which had called for demonstrations, at least 400,000 sites are infested today in France, including 100,000 in Ile-de-France, against 200,000 in 2016 and 2017.

"Bed bugs have experienced an exponential proliferation in recent years," laments the association, which refers to data collected by the House of Disinfection, Disinsection and Deratisation (CS3D).

"This scourge must be considered as a public health problem and that a program of prevention and eradication be set up, as is done for rats", asks the spokesman of the DAL, Jean-Baptise Eyraud .

According to him, the phenomenon particularly affects the poorly housed because "they do not have the means to fight against the invasion".

The treatment of an infested home costs between 300 and 350 euros, according to the association, and can only be done by professionals because bed bugs are resistant to most insecticides used today.

If they do not transmit disease, these brown insects that feed on blood, as big as an apple seed and visible to the naked eye, cause severe itching.

"Children can not sleep, they cry because the bites burn them everywhere, and in the morning they can not wake up to go to school," says Mahbouba, 29, a mother of three young children.

Bedbugs develop particularly in mattresses and sheets, but also in furniture and nooks.

According to specialists, this insect had practically disappeared since the 1960s, before spreading again in the big cities in the mid-2000s.

A study by an international team of researchers, published in May 2019 in the journal Current Biology, revealed that bed bugs have been present on Earth for over 100 million years and already existed at the time of the dinosaurs.

? 2019 AFP