Haze chokes babies, kills one

Rizal Harahap and Syofiardi Bachyul Jb, The Jakarta Post 9 Oct 15;

Nineteen babies have received intensive treatment in Sumatra hospitals after suffering from acute respiratory infections (ISPA).

One 28-day-old baby passed away on Wednesday at Muhammadiyah hospital in Palembang after suffering from an ISPA.

The province’s health agency head Lesty Nuraini said on Thursday that the baby suffered a lung infection that was most likely caused by inhaling the haze.

However, Lesty said her agency would conduct a thorough investigation to determine the cause of the death of the child of Hendra Saputra and Mursida, a couple from Baten Seberang Ulu, Palembang.

Meanwhile in Kuantan Singigi regency, Riau province, 18 infants were also being treated in the intensive care unit (ICU) of the regency’s general hospital suffering from haze-related illnesses.

Regency health agency official Detri Elvira said the babies were among dozens of children who were being treated at the hospital for respiratory diseases.

“The hospital is currently treating dozens of children and babies affected by land and forest fires,” Detri said as quoted by Antara news agency.

She said the babies should be given the highest standard of care as the haze was more dangerous to babies than adults. She revealed that some of the babies had to be treated in the ICU room as respiratory aid was required.

Besides the infants, Detri said that thousands of other residents had also been recorded as suffering haze-related illnesses and asked for help for the hospital and community health centers in the regency.

The province’s health agency head Andra Sjafril admitted that he had not yet been informed about the increasing number of babies being treated at Kuantan Singingi hospital.

“I have just heard about it [from you],” Andra told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

He said that, so far, his agency had received only general reports from regencies about the number of patients suffering haze-related illnesses, without details about the ages of those people.

However, he guaranteed that the babies and children would receive the highest level of treatment from local medical teams. “They must be treated according to the doctor’s prognosis.”

“There are also assistance teams helping medical personnel in the regencies. It’s not just the teams from the province, the central government has also deployed a rapid assessment team to help victims of haze in Riau,” he added.

He noted that some people, particularly babies, children, pregnant women and asthma sufferers were more susceptible to haze-related health problems.

“The vulnerable groups are strongly advised not to conduct outdoor activities. Even at home, they should wear masks, as haze can still enter their houses,” Andra said.

He said the province could do nothing to disperse the haze as it originated from other provinces.

“We just get the effects. As a preventative measure to deal with the increasing [number of] ISPA cases, we have distributed 6,000 free masks. That amount excludes the thousands of masks donated by companies and organizations in public places.”

Hundreds of thousands of residents in Sumatra and Kalimantan have suffered haze-related illnesses.

According to data from the Health Ministry, as of Thursday, 45,666 people in Riau Islands suffered from illnesses, with four fatalities, 69,734 Jambi residents were sick with one fatality and 83,276 South Sumatra residents suffered from illnesses and two people had died.

Although no deaths were recorded, the ministry noted 43,477 haze patents in West Kalimantan, 29,104 in South Kalimantan and 36,101 in Central Kalimantan.

Besides causing people to fall ill, the haze also affected participants of the Tour de Singkarak international cycling race in West Sumatra.

Two cyclists from Japan were seen wearing masks when starting stage four from the iconic Jam Gadang (Big Clock) in Bukittinggi to race 116 kilometers through haze to Istano Basa Pagaruyung in Batusangkar on Thursday.

Besides the two cities, other cities and regencies in the province have also been blanketed by haze. In Tanah Datar regency, visibility reached 400 meters and air quality was at an unhealthy level, according to Kototabang Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency.

S. Sumatra Governor Apologizes for Haze
Basten Gokkon Jakarta Globe 9 Oct 15;

Jakarta. South Sumatra Governor Alex Noerdin has apologized for the relentless spread of thick haze caused by wildfires across the province, which has disrupted his region as well as neighboring provinces and countries.

"As the governor, [I am] most responsible [for the haze] in South Sumatra," he said in the provincial capital of Palembang on Friday, as quoted by news portal Detik.com.

The province is among Sumatra's hardest-hit regions by the smog, which has depleted visibility range to as low as 200 meters on Wednesday.

Data from Indonesia's Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) recorded Palembang's air pollution index at 527 as of Friday at 9 a.m., a significant drop from 1,585 on Sept. 24.

Any index reading above 350 is considered hazardous.

The situation in South Sumatra, which has declared a state of emergency along with other haze-hit provinces Riau, Jambi, West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan and South Kalimantan, escalated when a 28-day-old baby named Husien Saputra died on Wednesday from an acute respiratory ailment believed to have been caused by the smog.

Alex also extended his apologies to the governments of neighboring countries Malaysia and Singapore, where dense haze forced schools to shut down for several days.

"We're very sorry. We never had any intention to send the smoke to other areas, but winds carried [the haze] to the north," he said.

"Let's all focus on extinguishing the fires and attend to the haze situation in our region," he added.

The government has deployed over 22,000 soldiers, policemen and firefighting personnel to extinguish the fires, while also sending planes to conduct water-bombing and cloud seeding operations.

More than 6,000 officers are expected to be deployed soon.

Indonesia finally accepted foreign aid on Thursday in the form of water bombing planes from Singapore, Russia, Malaysia, Japan, Australia and China.

The Health Ministry has also shipped more than one million face masks and 5,200 N95 respirators to areas worst hit by haze in Sumatra and Kalimantan, where a majority of the fires came from burning peatlands and forests to make way for palm oil plantation.

Indonesian farmers have used the slash-and-burn technique to clear land for decades as it is estimated to cost five times less than the safer method of using heavy machinery.

The Environment and Forestry Ministry has revoked four operating permits of companies found guilty for burning lands, with 30 more logging and palm-oil firms expected to face similar punishments.

The government will also place those companies on its blacklist, which the ministry expects will be completed in December.

Environmental group Greenpeace estimated that the amount of carbon emitted from haze in 2015 might exceed that of 1997, when Indonesia produced between 0.81 and 2.57 gigatons of the pollutant, equivalent to 13-40 percent of the entire world's annual fossil fuel emissions.

Indonesia, which has pledged a 29 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030, will likely be in the spotlight at the UN's climate change conference in Paris in December.


Senior minister monitors haze mitigation efforts in South Sumatra
Antara 9 Oct 15;

Palembang, S Sumatra (ANTARA News) - Coordinating Minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs Luhut Binsar Panjaitan visited South Sumatra province on Friday to monitor the efforts undertaken to handle haze caused by land and forest fires.

Panjaitan accompanied by National Police Chief General Badrodin Haiti, Army Chief of Staff General Mulyono, and South Sumatra Governor Alex Noerdin aboard a helicopter monitored the handling of haze in Ogan Komering Ilir district, which has witnessed the highest number of hotspots and land fires.

The minister pointed out that the haze disaster must be handled soon as it has far-reaching impacts not only on the peoples economy but also on human health.

He remarked that the existing efforts to cope with the haze disaster in South Sumatra must be stepped up as they have not yielded maximum results as expected.

South Sumatra still has several hotspots. On Friday, 450 hotspots were detected as opposed to 239 a day before.

He affirmed that the forest fire control task force in the province had done a good job. However, they still have to work harder to overcome the haze disaster immediately.

To handle the haze disaster in South Sumatra and several parts of Sumatra and Kalimantan, the central government will deploy more personnel and equipment, he emphasized.

"I urge all personnel involved in the haze disaster control efforts, both from the regional government and the Indonesian military and police, to take care of their health," he added.(*)


Johannes Nugroho: Don't Forget the Long-Term Effects of Haze on Health
Large parts of the country have been covered in thick haze for months now. (Antara Photo/Wahdi Septiawan)
Johannes Nugroho Jakarta Globe 10 Oct 15;

The last few years have seen forest-fire-induced haze episodes in Southeast Asia turn into an annual, albeit unwelcome, event during the dry season, with 2013 and 2015 arguably being the two particularly bad years.

As the haze is produced by forest fires in both Sumatra and Kalimantan, Jakarta is under intense pressure to do something about it. There’s growing evidence that the incidence of forest fires in Indonesia is becoming more frequent and unmanageable, with failure to act on the problem posing even greater costs and risks in the future, especially in the health sector.

Forest fires are nothing new in Southeast Asia, at least in the last 30 years, since vast tracts of land started to be cleared for cash crop growing. The combustibility of vegetation is further abetted by the dry season lasting longer as part of global warning as well as irresponsible slash and burn farming practices.

Throughout the 1990s, for the first time the Southeast Asian haze became a regular menace, with episodes occurring in 1990, 1991, 1994, 1997 and 1998. The first three mostly affected the Borneo side of Malaysia while the subsequent episodes saw the problem spread to encompass parts of Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore.

The 1997 fires which occurred in Sumatra and Kalimantan were of sufficient gravity to attract international attention for the first time.

Material losses aside, the increased frequency of haze episodes will almost certainly have both short term and long term health consequences on the region’s population. Greenpeace has released its estimate of 110,000 deaths occurring annually due to haze-related health problems in Southeast Asia, not to mention the climate-changing greenhouse gases unleashed into the atmosphere by the forest fires, estimated by the Global Fire Emissions Database to be 600,000 tons.

The Singapore Straits Times reported in mid-September that between 10,000 and 30,000 Indonesians were having health problems, particularly respiratory diseases, as a direct result from coming into contact with the haze. While no definite study has been carried out to measure the long term effects of regular exposure to forest fire smoke, it’s difficult to believe there won’t be any.

Wood smoke, though one of the oldest types of smoke encountered by human beings, is no more benign than, say, cigarette smoke. Typical wood smoke contains inorganic gases such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide which both irritate and asphyxiate the human respiratory system. It is also filled with hydrocarbons such as butadiene, benzene and styrene, which are toxic and potentially cancer-causing. Contained in wood smoke is also a host of free radicals and organic compounds such as methylene chloride, acrolein and formaldehyde which are allergenic as well as carcinogenic.

In a study conducted in 2000 on the military recruits who helped quell the California forest fire, it was found that their bone marrow entered a hyperstimulated phase, producing immature polymorphonuclear leukocytes during exposure to forest fire smoke; an automatic immune response to inflammation. During the Southeast Asian haze of 1998, a Malaysian medical study revealed that children experienced decreased lung function compared to the pre-haze period.

Although no definite link has been established between the inhalation of wood smoke and lung cancer, no study is conclusive enough to refute it. A 1998 study from China and a more recent one from the US in 2006 both found that exposure to low concentrations of wood smoke failed to significantly increase the risk of lung cancer in mice. However, a study in 2000 revealed that wood smoke can precipitate permanent damage to the cells and DNA of mice. The latter observation suggests that the poisoning of our DNA by the free radicals in wood smoke can trigger genetic mutation which can be passed on to the next generations.

The inundation of hospitals, health clinics and other facilities following the outbreak of haze in Sumatra and Kalimantan is proof enough of the pernicious short term health hazards. Yet it is the unknown long term effects that may present us with acute future health challenges.

This is especially pertinent as Indonesia, under its health insurance (BPJS) and health card (KIS) schemes, is attempting to move towards universal health coverage for its citizens. While it is still a far cry from the free health care systems provided in many developed European countries, there’s every reason to believe free or at least affordable health care will be an important issue with the country’s electorate in the years to come.

In 2012, Britain’s National Health System had to foot a bill of around $1.8 billion for the treatment of lung cancer patients. Given Indonesia’s larger population -- with the vast majority of men also regularly smoking tobacco -- we may end up with a formidably more sizeable bill, even without the possible effects of the haze.

If the government wants an omen about the gravity of the problem, it has to look no further than Palangkaraya, sometimes touted as our future capital city, which was blanketed recently in haze recording 1,986 on the pollution index -- when anything above 350 is hazardous.

Johannes Nugroho is a writer from Surabaya. He can be contacted at johannes@nonacris.com.