Skopje, 24 October 2025 (MIA) — Responding to Skopje's growing trash problem, the Public Health Institute has formed a workgroup of experts including staff from the Ministry of Interior and several inspectorates, which held a press conference Friday to issue recommendations to residents to wear protective gloves and masks near dumpsters to reduce physical contact with waste, toxic fumes and leachate. 

PHI director Marija Andonovska said their official opinions and recommendations had been submitted to several competent institutions earlier Friday. Epidemiologist Dragan Kuchinski urged citizens to regularly wash their hands and refrain from disposing of their waste at illegal dumping sites. 

The public health experts also recommended residents close lids of trash cans and dumpsters be placed far away from hospitals and schools.

"Our experience from the jaundice epidemic in Shtip showed us that placing dumpsters close to schools poses a risk," environmental and health safety specialist Mirjana Dimovska said, recommending that school principals put up posters showing schoolchildren how to wash their hands.

She also suggested using disinfection foot mats in front of homes. "These measures are collective, but also individual ones. Every one of us has a responsibility," she added.

The public health experts called on the city's sanitation department to urgently collect the trash and perform an emergency disinfection of public spaces as well as exterminate rats, especially around hospitals, schools, parks and playgrounds.

They also recommended closer epidemiological surveillance for infectious diseases. 

Sanitation workers, the experts said, should be protected by mandatory vaccination as well as personal protective equipment when handling waste. The public should also be educated about the health risks, they said.

The experts also recommended the wearing of protective respirator masks not only to protect Skopje residents from airborne viruses and other pathogens, they said, but also to reduce their exposure to "chemical fumes, odors and other gases that have no smell but are very toxic." mr/