Children’s health at risk in south Borneo as El Niño intensifies Indonesia wildfires

Wildfires driven by El Niño-dried peatlands are burning across Indonesian Borneo, with residents like Siti Sarah in South Kalimantan fighting flames with sticks and buckets while smoke seeps into homes and lungs. South Kalimantan's health department recorded 36,196 acute respiratory infection cases in about a month, in a province of 4.4 million people, even as its head declined to formally link the fires to the illness.

A five-year-old boy in the province developed pneumonia after weeks of coughing and fever, and was hospitalized in time; nationally, UNICEF estimates roughly 19,000 children die annually from preventable pneumonia. Peatlands drained for palm oil plantations are especially prone to uncontrolled burning once dried by drought, echoing the catastrophic 2015 fire season.

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