Private hospital group Life Healthcare says its southern African operation has been the victim of a targeted criminal attack on its IT systems.
“We acted immediately on becoming aware of the incident and took our systems offline, in order to actively contain the attack,” the company said in a statement.
The group added that it was still investigating whether any data was compromised in the attack.
“External cyber security experts and forensic teams have been brought on board to advise and supplement our internal teams and capacity,” Life Healthcare said.
“We have alerted the relevant authorities and investigations are underway.”
Patient care has not been impacted and LHC continues to provide quality healthcare across all of its hospitals and clinics, with patient care continuing to be our foremost priority.
Pieter Van der Westhuizen, Acting Group CEO, said this criminal attack on the hospital system will not affect the quality of care and clinical excellence.
“Patient care remains our key priority. We are deeply disappointed and saddened that criminals would attack our facilities during such a time, when we are all working tirelessly and collectively to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
“However, we will not be distracted, and will continue to place our patients first. We regret that the disruption caused by this incident may cause our patients some frustration, in what is already a trying time.
“We recognise and thank our employees, doctors and service providers for their dedication, and the professionalism they have shown by quickly adopting our manual backup systems. Our investigations continue and we are working around-the-clock to restore the affected systems.”
