Coffee-coloured water runs from the taps in Gostivar, hospitals fill with people suffering stomach complaints, and the institutions argue over whether to call the thing by its real name - an epidemic. While the authorities weigh their words, thirty percent of a single town has fallen ill with the same disease. If this isn't an epidemic, then what is?

On 17 July, the Food and Veterinary Agency issued a ban on using drinking water from the Gostivar supply system, over well-founded suspicion that it is contaminated and unsafe. The Institute of Public Health is emphatic: the water must not be used for drinking even after boiling, until the ban is officially lifted. Special caution, they say, for infants, small children, pregnant women and the elderly - those who bear intestinal infections the hardest.

Epidemic or not - the fight over what to call it

This is where the real drama begins. Health Minister Sašo Klekovski says an epidemic will not be declared for now, until the cause of the illness is established. Microbiologist Dr Nikola Panovski demands exactly the opposite - and does not mince words.

„There is an epidemic of gastroenteritis in Gostivar. 1,500 registered with the same symptoms and at least another 5,000 who did not go to a doctor. In one town, 30 percent of the population has fallen ill with the same disease and there are no grounds to declare an epidemic. Well, bravo“, Panovski wrote, calling on epidemiologists to react. „This isn't politics, this is your duty.“

Heavy words from a man who knows what he's talking about. Because the difference isn't only in terminology - declaring an epidemic pulls in measures, resources and responsibility. Not declaring one is more comfortable for the figures, but not for the sick.

The prosecution has entered the game

Unlike the debate over words, the prosecution isn't waiting. The Basic Public Prosecutor's Office in Gostivar has opened an investigation over the mass complaints, and the spring in Vrutok has been placed under strict police control to prevent any further contamination of the site. Urgent laboratory testing of the samples is under way at the Institute of Public Health.

The results of the toxicological and microbiological analyses are expected in the coming days, after which the prosecutor will decide whether there are grounds for criminal prosecution for endangering citizens' health. Only then will it be known whether the cause is a bacterium, a virus, a parasite or something worse - heavy metals.

But one question already hangs in the air, regardless of the lab findings. How did it even come to this - unsafe water flowing through a town's supply system - and who was supposed to prevent it for years? A water system doesn't fail overnight. The failure is always gradual, quiet, until someone falls ill. Gostivar is now paying that bill with its health.