London hospitals cancel cancer operations after cyber attack

Hospitals in London have had to cancel cancer operations this week due to a Russian cyber attack that continues to severely disrupt NHS services in the capital.

St Thomas’ and King’s College hospitals have postponed procedures their surgeons were due to carry out on cancer patients since the attack began last Monday, the Guardian can reveal.

They were forced to take this step because the hack would have prevented them from providing a blood transfusion for a patient who needed one.

Russian hackers, believed to be the Qilin group, launched a ransomware attack on Synnovis, which supplies blood tests to St Thomas’, King’s and other hospitals in south-east London.

One senior NHS manager told the Health Service Journal (HSJ) that the attack, one of the largest to hit the service, was “everyone’s worst nightmare.”

NHS England has released few details about the impact of the cyber attack, despite it continuing to cause major disruption to six NHS trusts and dozens of GP practices in south-east London, which together provide care to around 2 million people.

It declined on Friday to say how many operations, including cancer and transplant operations, had been postponed this week as a result of the attack. Officials insisted they had no figures on the number of operations affected, even though managers at the hospitals involved have had to explain to patients why their procedures have been postponed.

In a statement Thursday NHS England said only that “some non-urgent operations and procedures, including transplants” were being postponed.

Dr. Chris Streather, the medical director of NHS England’s London region, said in the statement: “We are sorry to everyone affected and staff will be working hard to re-arrange appointments and treatments as quickly as possible.”

The same statement revealed for the first time that no fewer than six NHS trusts – four more than NHS England initially reported – had been affected. These include the south London and Maudsley and Oxleas mental health trusts, the Lewisham and Greenwich acute trust and the Bromley community services trust, as well as the very large acute trusts that run King’s and St Thomas’.

The lack of transparency is causing unrest among staff affected by the cyber attack, which the HSJ reported was likely to continue causing problems for “weeks, not days”.