Indonesia haze puts 3.4m at risk, ministry says

Indonesia's health ministry said Wednesday that 3.4 million people in seven provinces on Borneo and Sumatra were at risk of respiratory infections as wildfire haze covered cities and towns.

Indonesia has battled wildfires for weeks, with school closures, thousands of people requiring medical treatment and smoke reaching neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore.

In Pekanbaru, the capital of Riau province on Sumatra, thick smog forced the government to close dozens of schools and urge residents to stay indoors. The Jambi local government ordered home schooling for kindergarten and elementary school children for the rest of the week.

The health ministry said it had distributed more than 260,000 face masks to residents in the hardest-hit areas.

President Prabowo Subianto said on Tuesday that the government had deployed dozens of helicopters, aircraft, water pumps and thousands of personnel to fight the fires. He said he believed the situation had begun to be brought under control in several places and hoped it could be resolved within one to two weeks.

Police said over the weekend that they had arrested 72 people on suspicion of starting fires. The government said last week that fires between January and July had burned more than 200,000 hectares of land.

Malaysia said it was ready to help put out fires. Poor air quality in Malaysia's Sarawak state led to nearly 600 schools being closed last week.