Watch out for bedbugs: how to deal with these pests I hope you are not sleeping in a bathtub, stressed to the point of tears, sleep deprived, and peppered with itchy red bites and welts -- courtesy of bedbugs . Watch out for these blood-sucking vermin, as they are on the rise in British Columbia -- the Lower Mainland particularly. The West End and Downtown Eastside are the hardest-hit areas, and the bugs are currently making inroads into detached dwellings and Vancouver's posh neighbourhoods, as well as the suburbs. Live bedbugs were also found in library books across the Lower Mainland in 2011, leading librarians to trash books and close branches in a bid to stop the bugs from spreading. The bedbug problem is expected to worsen. In North America, the bug's numbers have increased as much as 500 to 600 percent in the past decade, costing businesses and homeowners billions of dollars annually to deal with the outbreaks. Infestations have occurred in homes, hotels, hostels, hospitals, cruise ships, airplanes, trains, schools, and long-term care facilities. British Columbia needs a broad strategy to tackle the growing bedbug problem. Ontario recently committed $5 million to help public health agencies tackle the problem, while Manitoba announced a bedbug strategy that will see every municipality participate. Some mattress retailers in Western Canada and Maritimes have ended exchange policies due to bedbug concerns. Bedbugs are small insects with oval-shaped flat bodies and no wings. Adult bedbugs are about five to seven millimetres long (about