This is the VOA Special English Economics Report.

They are not even five millimeters long and cannot fly or jump. Yet bedbugs strike fear in homeowners and business owners. Well, not all business owners. Some see money in these little bloodsuckers.

Missy Henriksen speaks for the National Pest Management Association.

MISSY HENRIKSEN: "We are now seeing bedbugs in what we would consider to be atypical locations: schools and hospitals, retail locations, movie theaters. So, as the numbers have grown, those bed bugs are spreading out and traveling along with people."
New York and other cities have outbreaks. But the United States is not the only country affected.