The municipality of Gazi Baba has carried out emergency additional spraying against adult mosquitoes because of the rising number of registered West Nile fever cases. The treatment covered critical and priority locations, and preventive action will continue over the coming days.

„The protection and rescue department, in cooperation with the Public Health Centre, carried out emergency additional adulticide field spraying at several locations across the Municipality of Gazi Baba”, mayor Boban Stefkovski announced. He said there is no reason to panic, but that caution and responsibility are essential.

The appeal to residents is specific: do not leave containers and surfaces with standing water in yards, on balconies and around homes, because those are ideal mosquito breeding sites.

Bitola reacting to an epidemic in Skopje

The story does not stop in Skopje. The municipality of Bitola announced additional emergency spraying, even though by 9 August all its regular activities there had already been carried out - three larvicide and three adulticide treatments, according to data from the Bitola Public Health Centre.

The reason for the extra measures is the declared West Nile fever epidemic in part of Skopje's territory. The additional larvicide treatment in Bitola is scheduled for 19 August, and the adulticide one from 23 to 27 August.

Larvicide treatment attacks the larvae at breeding sites, adulticide targets adult mosquitoes. The combination is standard and the textbooks say it works - if it is carried out on time.

And there is the whole point. Bitola completed every planned treatment and still has to run emergency ones, because an epidemic was declared somewhere else. That means the plan was drawn up for a normal season, and the season is not normal. Mosquitoes do not recognise a municipal border, and the pest control budget evidently does.

Residents are again urged to remove standing water from yards, balconies, flowerpots and containers, to use screens on windows and personal protection against bites. That is advice worth following. But when the state shifts prevention onto the owner of the flowerpot, it is worth asking what the institution was doing in June.