In West Kalimantan the smoke has turned into a health emergency

Al Jazeera went to Kubu Raya in West Kalimantan, where fires have grown and spread for close to two weeks. Salma, who has lived there for 15 years, told the network she has never seen a fire like this and left her house when the flames came near. Firefighters saved it. Anas Dwi Wahyu Kurniawan, a volunteer firefighter, said the closest thing he can remember is 2016. His crew works without proper protective gear, runs short of water, and cannot see far through the haze.

The health numbers give the size of it. Indonesia's Health Ministry says 3.4 million people are at risk of infections of the nose, throat and lungs and has handed out more than 260,000 masks in the worst-hit areas. At the Sungai Durian health clinic, Dr Muhammad Arief Trihapsoro told Al Jazeera that between 50 and 70 people walk in every day with a cough and a swollen, painful throat. Doctors are watching for bronchitis, an infection of the airways that leads into the lungs, and they also point to what months of dirty air do later, including a higher chance of stroke and heart disease.

Children and pregnant women take the worst of it. Siti Zahra, a mother of two, said her children have been sick three times in a single month, with stomach pain, fever, coughing and runny noses. She keeps them indoors and sweeps ash that comes straight back. President Prabowo Subianto has sent dozens of helicopters and aircraft, water pumps and thousands of personnel to the fire lines, and fires are still burning across Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Java and Papua.

Why it matters

If you have young children, or asthma, in any of the smoke-hit provinces, the practical steps are the ones these clinic doctors describe: a mask that really filters rather than a cloth one, windows closed in the worst hours, and an early clinic visit when a cough will not clear. Ask whether your local health centre still has masks, because supply is being pushed out province by province. The longer the smoke sits, the more the damage moves from this month's coughs to next decade's heart and lung disease, and that bill lands on families, not on the firefighting budget.