Indonesia's wildfire smoke is sending children to the hospital with pneumonia
El Nino-driven wildfires in Borneo and Sumatra have sent tens of thousands of people to health clinics with respiratory illness this year, with children at the highest risk.
Wildfires burning across drained peatlands in Borneo and Sumatra during this year's El Nino-driven dry season are causing a surge in respiratory illness, with children especially at risk. The fires, which spread easily through dried-out peat, have sent smoke as far as Malaysia and Singapore, prompting regional health alerts.
In South Kalimantan province alone, health officials recorded 36,196 respiratory infection cases between mid-July and mid-August. Fine particles in the smoke penetrate deep into the lungs, and doctors say children, older people and those with existing lung conditions face the highest risk. One mother described her entire household falling ill, and another said she paid significant out-of-pocket costs after her 5-year-old developed pneumonia, a disease that kills more than 700,000 infants worldwide every year.
Satellite data shows this year's fire season has already surpassed Indonesia's severe 2019 wildfires in scale. A comparable El Nino-driven fire season in 2015 killed an estimated 100,000 people across Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore combined, mostly from smoke-related illness rather than the fires themselves.
Based on reporting by Riyad Dafhi Rizki for Mongabay, via Eco-Business. Read the original: https://www.eco-business.com/news/children-in-south-borneo-face-health-risks-as-el-nino-fuels-wildfires/
This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by an editor before publication.
