ROME: Doctors in Rome are warning of possible health hazards caused by overflowing trash bins in the city’s streets, as the Italian capital struggles with a renewed garbage emergency aggravated by the summer heat.

Trash disposal is a decades-long problem for the Eternal City. Rome was left with no major site to treat the 1.7 million metric tons of trash it produces every year since the Malagrotta landfill was closed in 2013.

Successive mayors from different parties have all proved incapable of solving the city’s garbage woes, which have re-emerged dramatically since Mayor Virginia Raggi of the populist 5-Star Movement took the helm three years ago.

Raggi’s administration is facing frustration and anger from both tourists and Romans over the piles of trash that threaten peoples’ health and tarnish the city’s image.

“We’ve become the third, fourth world in my opinion,” said Rome resident Rossana Franza. “Mrs Raggi should take a small stroll here once and a while. Because in her neighbourhood, which I have been to, it is all in order.”

Another woman living in Rome who only gave her name as Alessia told The Associated Press that a rat walked by her the other day and she cannot even go outside in the evenings because “there’s an incredible stink.”

Animals like dogs, cats and rats or even birds like seagulls pose a serious health risks as they root around in garbage and spread bacterial infections through their waste or urine, Dr Roberto Volpe from the National Research Council CNR told The Associated Press.