The ambulance that was called to 6/1 Lech Kaczynski St in Chisinau in the evening of September 20 to provide assistance to a man who felt sick on the street arrived in eight minutes, but the ambulance doctors could only state the man’s death, the National Pre-Hospital Emergency Medical Assistance Center has said. The Center reacted following social media reports that an ambulance arrived in over 40 minutes despite numerous calls to the emergency service made by passersby as the man was dying before their eyes, IPN reports.

The Center said an internal inquiry was opened into this case and its results will be announced later. According to the Center, a large number of calls to the emergency service are daily made between 6pm and 10pm. When the given call was made, all the ambulance teams were out.

Speaker of Parliament Andrian Candu also reacted, saying he will personally monitor the developments in this case. “According to the data provided by the authorities, a commission of inquiry started to investigate the tragedy. A number of 27 minutes passed from the time the first call was made until the ambulance team arrived, but this period should not exceed 15 minutes...,” Andrian Candu wrote on his Facebook page.

The case of a man who died on Lech Kaczynski St in Chisinau until an ambulance arrived was related by the wife of ex-minister of education Mihail Shleahtitski in the social media. Maria Shleahtitski wrote that she and other passersby made numerous calls to the 112 service, asking to urgently send an ambulance to help the man who was in convulsions, but the service was more preoccupied with the caller’s identity than with the saving of a person’s life. An ambulance arrived in over 40 minutes of the first call and the doctors could only state the man’s death.