By World News Report Bureau

Yvonne Rollins, 56, a resident of Spring Valley filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against InterContinental Hotels Group that runs Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites at Laurinburg in North Carolina after being traumatized by bedbug bites in the middle of the night.

Rollins sought medical attention immediately after the attack and was prescribed medication for anxiety and “persistent nervous cough”. The doctors who attended to her told her that this might compromise her recovery from breast cancer as bedbugs are known to carry some pathogens.

In her $7 million lawsuit suit filed in U.S. District Court in White Plains she alleged negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress and breach of contract. The hotel had a duty to provide her a “vermin-free” room during her stay she contended.

Let’s face one harsh reality — Bedbugs are found all over the globe from ancient Egypt to India, China, Japan, Australia, Africa to modern day Switzerland, France or Britain– including all the 50 states of USA.

Since times immemorial one of the most common bed-time lines that parents tell their children before they go to sleep all over the world is “Good night, I hope the bed bugs doesn’t not bite you tonight.”

Bed bugs are small, brownish, oval shaped parasites from the Cimicid insect family. What they love doing most is — sucking blood- human or animal– it acts like tonic for their growth and survival. After each feeding their body swell up and turns reddish — with the passage of time the color fades to brown. A baby bedbug shed its skin at least five times before reaching maturity and requires a meal of blood before each shedding.

This tiny bloodthirsty beast is one of man worst and one of the oldest enemies with a history dating back to over 250,000 years at a time when our ancestors probably lived in caves with insect and bats to give company.

Bed bugs can make themselves comfortably– at home– anywhere under the sun. From individual homes, multi-storied apartments, hotels, hospitals, offices, shopping malls, movie theaters, schools, college campuses and even five-star hotels — no place is safe or no entry zone for them.

Bed bugs are excellent hitchhikers that can easily hide or move from one place to another in mattresses, beds, suitcases, boxes, shoes, upholstery, picture frames, false ceiling, ventilation ducts, small cracks or crevices in the wall, electrical switchboards and furniture or under the seats in cars, buses and trains. Bedbugs can’t fly, but they can move quickly over floors, walls, and ceilings.

Bed bugs are mainly active at night, but are not exclusively nocturnal. They usually feed on their hosts without being noticed. They prefer exposed skin, preferably the face, neck and arms of a sleeping person. Bedbugs are attracted by exhaled carbon dioxide and body heat of a sleeping person.

A female bedbug can lay hundreds of tiny eggs- the size of a speck of dust, over a lifetime.

Bedbug bites are not known to transmit disease, they aren’t harmless. They can trigger allergy, skin rashes and asthma. In some cases it can also lead to anemia and nervous breakdowns.

The early Egyptians used to cast spells to repel the bugs.

But since modern science does not believe in casts and spells, little wonder these bloodsucking pests are the fastest moneymakers for those in the pest control trade.