Klekovski to publish epidemiological report on Gostivar; urges utility and city to release water tests

Health Minister Sasho Klekovski said he will publish an epidemiological report about the outbreak in Gostivar on Thursday and urged the municipal utility and the city administration to make available their water test results. More than 5,000 residents were infected after consuming water from the town supply, officials have said.

Addressing what he called a circulating disinformation, Klekovski said: "I want to clear up one disinformation that is spreading. When I announced, I said we would publish information on August 20, that is the epidemiological report for Gostivar. It will state what and how and which institutions did what."

Scope of the ministry's publication

Klekovski stressed that the ministry's publication will be the epidemiological material, while raw water-testing results are the responsibility of the local utility and the municipality. He said the Health Ministry will release results relevant to the outbreak covering the period "from January 1, 2026 to the peak of the epidemic."

He added in explanation: "The water testing results themselves are the property of the Gostivar Public Utility Company and the city of Gostivar. What the ministry will publish are the results that were relevant to the epidemic, and that is from 1 January 2026 to the peak of the epidemic. However, I see no problem, since those are day-to-day controls, for them to be published by, I can suggest, the Public Utility and the Center for Public Health Tetovo, as I will publish all that the Center for Public Health has done this year."

Klekovski said authorities must handle the outbreak transparently and learn structural lessons. "The situations, especially in Gostivar, repeat and we need to structurally see what the problem in the water supply is and whether there were problems in the institutions' response, because several institutions are responsible, the Public Utility, the Food and Veterinary Agency, the public health centres, and we will disclose all matters most transparently. We will also publish from 2017, 2019 — what is the property of the ministry, namely the testing done under the National Programme, and those that are the property of the Public Utility must be published by the Public Utility itself, that is the order. To be clear, these are studies that were commissioned and can only be published by the client," he said.

The town's drinking water was banned on July 17 after utility workers placed submersible pumps in a canal containing surface water with harmful substances near the overflow chamber for the drinking-water reservoir to test pressure. Since Friday the water in Gostivar has been declared safe for drinking.

Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski has also insisted the water report be published, calling for confirmation that the town supply is now safe to drink.

Photo: press material from the event