At 8:30pm on 5 August, a 34-year-old man from the village of Desovo, municipality of Dolneni, walked into the Prilep police station. He reported that his eleven-year-old nephew had left home and the family could not find him. Police are taking measures. That is everything we officially know.

And that "everything we know" is the problem. The statement contains not one detail that a person outside the police could act on - what the child was wearing, how tall he is, what his hair looks like, which direction he was last seen heading. There's no photograph either. For a case where every hour counts, the public got less information than it gets about a speeding ticket.

Every country with a functioning system for missing children knows one thing: the first hours are everything. That's why rapid alert systems exist - messages to mobile phones in the region, posts with a photograph and description in every outlet, mobilising local residents. Not because the police aren't doing their job, but because the police cannot be on every path around Desovo at once. Fifty neighbours can.

Desovo is a small village in Dolneni, surrounded by fields and mountainous terrain. For an eleven-year-old that is a space where a person is easily lost, and more easily still remains unfound if nobody knows what they're looking for. Every hour without a description is an hour lost.

Does Macedonia have a functioning public alert system for a missing child? Formally - yes. In practice, we're looking at the result: a statement of a few sentences, without a single detail a citizen could use to help.

We hope the boy comes home today and that this turns out to be the story of one frightening afternoon. But the system must not rely on hope.