More than 170,000 respiratory cases recorded in haze-choked Indonesia

More than 170,000 respiratory cases reported in haze-hit Indonesia

More than 40,000 of the cases, ranging from mild coughs to pneumonia, are among toddlers.

About 175,000 people in Indonesia have been affected by respiratory illness since August, the health ministry said, as the country continues to fight wildfires that have burned for weeks.

More than 40,000 cases, spanning coughs, bronchitis and more severe illnesses such as pneumonia, involve toddlers.

Forest fires have covered parts of the country, along with neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore, in poisonous smog, driving air quality readings into "unhealthy" levels.

Indonesia has sent more than 54,000 officials and dozens of aircraft to Borneo and Sumatra for water bombing, but authorities say the country’s huge size and difficult peatland conditions are making the fires hard to extinguish.

"From the air to the ground, all forces continue to move," Indonesia's Cabinet Secretary Teddy Indra Wijaya said on Monday.

"Everything is being done to extinguish the fires, reduce the impact of the smoke, and, most importantly, protect the public from the threat of forest and land fires."

Indonesia routinely fights wildfires during its yearly dry season, which typically lasts from July to October.

This year, though, the fires and haze have been intensified by a so-called "Godzilla" El Nino, which has driven exceptionally dry conditions.

The independent forest monitoring platform Nusantara Atlas had identified about 734,000 hotspots across the country as of Wednesday - a number more than 30% higher than in 2019, one of Indonesia's worst wildfire seasons.

Since January, at least 895,657 hectares of land - nearly six times the size of Greater London - have burned.

The wildfires have caused school closures and a rise in hospital admissions across Indonesia.

The number of people with wildfire-related respiratory illnesses had more than doubled to 113,336 by 9 September, from 50,891 on 1 September, according to health ministry figures.

The toxic haze has also harmed wildlife, including critically endangered orangutans.

Late last month, an Indonesia-based wildlife foundation released footage showing an orangutan writhing on the ground at a palm oil plantation in West Kalimantan, one of Indonesia's hardest-hit provinces. The great ape, found by a farmer, was rescued and given emergency treatment for hypoxia, but later died.

Indigenous and civil society groups in West Kalimantan filed a class action lawsuit last week against the central government and local administrations, accusing them of deliberate negligence for failing to properly address the wildfires burning across the province.

"This is a disaster that occurs every year. This recurring pattern proves our view that the defendants knew about the potential haze disaster and the risks of disaster from forest and land fires," the group's lawyer Glorio Sanen said in a statement at the time.

Indonesia has conducted several rounds of cloud-seeding operations in recent weeks, some carried out together with members of Japan's Self-Defense Forces who arrived in Borneo earlier this month to assist with firefighting efforts.

Cloud seeding means altering existing clouds, such as by dropping salt crystals or silver iodide into them, to encourage rain. Meteorologists, however, are split on how effective the method is.

In the Malaysian state of Sarawak, one of the worst-hit areas outside Indonesia, authorities began a five-day cloud-seeding operation earlier this month.

Besides addressing the ongoing haze, the effort was also intended to raise falling water levels at several hydropower dams ahead of a severe dry spell expected in October.

"October might be hotter and drier," Sarawak's Deputy Premier Douglas Uggah Embas told reporters. "We want to increase the water levels as much as possible while we still can."

The haze has spread as far as parts of the Philippines, where local officials have told residents to stay indoors as much as possible, and Singapore, where authorities have started issuing daily haze advisories.