Millions of Indonesians are facing severe health risks from a thick haze covering multiple cities and towns, driven by El Niño-fuelled wildfires across the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. Officials reported that the blazes have led to widespread school closures, thousands of medical treatments, and cross-border smoke pollution affecting neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore.
Indonesia Wildfires Trigger Health Crisis as Smog Blankets Borneo and Sumatra
According to the Indonesian health ministry, 3.4 million people living across seven provinces on Borneo and Sumatra are at risk of acute respiratory infections from exposure to the toxic smog. In Pekanbaru, the capital of Riau province in Sumatra, thick haze prompted the government to shutter dozens of schools and urge residents to stay indoors. Abdullah, a 38-year-old entrepreneur in Pekanbaru, described the grim conditions to the AFP news agency: The smog gets thicker at night, making Pekanbaru almost like a dead city. A lot of people don’t dare go out. And if they do, they wear masks.
Similar disruptions hit Jambi province on Sumatra, where the local government ordered home schooling for kindergarten and elementary school students for the remainder of the week. Farida, a 31-year-old homemaker in Jambi, told AFP that the haze had already impacted her family’s well-being: My four-year-old child and I have begun coughing so much, especially when we stay outdoors too long. I have trouble breathing.
In response to the crisis, the health ministry distributed more than 260,000 face masks to residents in the hardest-hit regions.
Government Response and Agricultural Slash-and-Burn Practices
President Prabowo Subianto stated that authorities have deployed dozens of helicopters, aircraft, water pumps, and thousands of personnel to combat the fires. Now I think it has begun to be brought under control, mitigated,
Prabowo said, adding that he hopes the situation can be resolved within one to two weeks. Police reported the arrest of 72 individuals over the weekend on suspicion of starting fires.
Government figures indicate that wildfires between January and July burned more than 200,000 hectares of land—an area three times the size of Jakarta—surpassing totals from previous El Niño seasons in 2019 and 2023. Most of the blazes are attributed to slash-and-burn agricultural practices used to clear land. In Borneo, drained peatlands utilized for oil palm plantations have turned into tinderboxes under the severe El Niño drought, allowing fires to spread rapidly across low-lying plains and carbon-rich terrain.
Regional Air Quality Impacts in Southeast Asia
Southeasterly trade winds have carried the wildfire pollution beyond Indonesia, prompting health advisories in Malaysia and Singapore according to Mongabay. In Malaysia’s Sarawak state on Borneo island, poor air quality led to the closure of nearly 600 schools. Tracker IQ Air briefly ranked the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur as the second-most polluted city globally, while Malaysia announced it stands ready to assist in putting out the fires.
The prolonged dry season, prolonged further by a strong El Niño expected to last past October, has compounded dangers for local residents and wildlife, including animal rescuers scrambling to save stranded orangutans in western Borneo. Syamsul Arifin, dean of the medical faculty at Lambung Mangkurat University, noted that fine airborne particles from wildfire smoke cause systemic inflammation and multiple organ disorders, noting that acute respiratory infection is the most frequently reported morbidity during forest and land fires.
