Man claims bed bugs hiding in patient room bit him at Fayetteville hospital

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (WTVD) -- Mikail Stewart-Cannon visited his father, a patient at Cape Fear Valley Medical Center, on Saturday. He took a nap in the recliner chair in his father's room and woke up to an itchy lower back.

"So I go to the bathroom and feel and see five red marks on my lower back," said Stewart-Cannon. "As I'm pulling back the cover, I see two dots on the back of the chair. At first I thought it was dirt or something that fell off my hoodie. The dots start to move across the chair."

Stewart-Cannon said he was instructed to throw out his clothing and his father's. Though his father has been released from the hospital, Stewart-Cannon said he's concerned for other patients being treated there.

Cape Fear Valley Medical Center released the following statement:

Over the weekend, it was brought to our attention that there may have been bedbugs in a patient room. Cape Fear Valley immediately followed our established guidelines with our Infection Control and Environmental Services departments to remove the patient from the room and safely bag the patient belongings. We also sealed off the potentially infected room and enacted thorough industry-standard pest decontamination protocols. Cape Fear Valley cannot speak to how the bedbugs arrived on our premises nor discuss protected patient information in any way.

Cape Fear Valley cannot fully prevent bedbugs from entering its facility, since we do not turn away anyone seeking medical care. This is true for any other U.S. hospital, as well as other public places, such as hotels, movie theaters and schools.

Our Environmental Services staff and nursing supervisors are trained to identify bedbugs. Once a potential event is identified, we have an effective process in place to identify and contain any problem.

As there is no safe protocol to preventively treat a large facility for bedbugs, our professional contracted pest control service rapidly responds to any events or potential events at our request. We treat rooms when a sighting has occurred, then we thoroughly clean the room to remove any residual insecticides.