PALANGKARAYA — Sudarsono shuddered as he inhaled from an oxygen tank while being evacuated from his small house in Palangkaraya on Indonesian Borneo, yellow, acrid wildfire smoke billowing all around.

The 57-year-old fell sick after going out with three friends days earlier to fight fires creeping closer to homes on the outskirts of the city in Central Kalimantan province, one of the regions hit hardest by months of blazes and haze.

“I wore a mask, goggles, everything, but I was surrounded by smoke. I went home since I couldn’t take it anymore,” the construction worker and farmer told AFP as he was being loaded into an ambulance to go to hospital last week.

Sudarsono’s backyard had been blackened by flames, with only a few tree stumps and a cloying smoke left.

“I hope that there will be no more haze, that Central Kalimantan will be free from fires so people can feel safe, work and earn a living,” Sudarsono said before the ambulance doors closed.

He is among more than 11,000 people treated for respiratory infections in Palangkaraya during a months-long wildfire crisis that has also affected Indonesia’s neighbours with toxic haze pollution.

More than 300,000 people in seven provinces were laid low by respiratory tract infections from August to October, according to Indonesia’s health ministry.

At a nearby shelter run by NGOs in Palangkaraya, Alexandra Surya Habsari was treated with a nebuliser and oxygen for breathing difficulties and a headache.