The boy had spilled a cup of hot tea on himself on Thursday and was burned on his face, neck and trunk. His mother immediately called SOS Alarm, the agency responsible for handling 112 emergency calls and coordinating rescue work. She was told that they should go to the hospital on their own.

The journey to Huddinge Hospital took forty minutes. In Huddinge, the boy’s condition was deemed serious and he was taken by ambulance to Astrid Lindgren Children’s Hospital.

“What has happened is extremely unfortunate. It appears that we should have sent an ambulance. But I want to review the conversation before I say anything more,” Britt Stålhandske, deputy director of operations at SOS Alarm in Stockholm, told Aftonbladet.

On Sunday, Aftonbladet reported of another incident in Falun in central Sweden involving a one-year-old with blood poisoning and a fever of 39.2 degrees Celsius who was also denied an ambulance. The incident has since been reported to the National Board of Health and Welfare.