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The health ministry recorded 174,694 cases of acute respiratory infections in seven fire-affected provinces between August 18 and September 21, with 40,363 of those involving children under five. Then Suyanti, the ministry’s director of environmental health, said only 4,533 cases were still active as of September 22 while the rest had recovered. More than 12.5 million people have been exposed to the hazardous haze, according to ministry data that also showed cases more than doubling in the first week of September.
Fires have burned nearly 900,000 hectares of land since the start of the year, an area almost six times the size of Greater London, the independent monitoring platform Nusantara Atlas reported. This year’s wildfire season is the most severe in 11 years, driven by super El Niño conditions that have created prolonged drought across Sumatra and Borneo, forestry ministry figures show. Emissions from the blazes accounted for more than a third of the global total in early September, according to the European Union’s Copernicus climate monitoring service.
A CELIOS study estimated the combined economic and health costs from January to August at between 39.29 trillion and 123.1 trillion rupiah, equivalent to up to 7.3 billion dollars. The upper range represents almost half of Central Kalimantan’s projected 2026 gross regional domestic product, the Center for Economic and Law Studies assessment found. Healthcare costs alone could reach 9.75 trillion rupiah for diagnosed cases or as much as 93.56 trillion when including undiagnosed symptoms, CELIOS data places the burden at 67.6 percent of the national health budget allocation.
Schools in affected regions have shifted more than 1.4 million students to remote learning as air quality indices exceeded hazardous levels, education ministry official Gogot Suharwoto said. In Pontianak, clinics reported treating 187 cases of breathing difficulties in the first 11 days of September compared with 422 for all of August, local health head Popong Solihat noted. One resident told Reuters she often feels short of breath when exposed to the smoke, with symptoms worsening in the mornings and evenings.
The government has deployed more than 50 aircraft for water bombing and cloud seeding while accepting assistance from Japan, which sent military transport and crew to support firefighting efforts in Borneo, the national disaster agency reported. Nearly a million masks and hundreds of oxygen concentrators have been distributed alongside thousands of additional medical workers to the hardest-hit areas, health ministry spokesperson Widyawati stated. The fires have also created transboundary haze that reached emergency thresholds in parts of Malaysia and affected air quality as far as the Philippines, according to regional environmental data.
Indonesia’s forestry ministry recorded 202,000 hectares burned from January to July, with an additional 600,000 hectares estimated in August by environmental group YKAN. Authorities have warned the blazes could continue until early November as the rainy season is delayed, forestry minister Raja Juli Antoni told local media. The health ministry is providing public education on reducing exposure while strengthening hospitals with extra supplies to manage the ongoing crisis.
