By Matangi Tonga reporters

Tonga’s National Health Information System is a victim of hackers who are demanding a ransom from the Tonga Government to release the nation’s medical records and health plans, the Minister of Health revealed this afternoon.

The Minister of Health, Dr Ana ‘Akau’ola has not disclosed the sum sought by the ransomware. “I really cannot share that at the moment,” she said in response to a question from Matangi Tonga, at the Prime Minister’s weekly press briefing.

She said the ransomware hit the National Health Information System on Sunday 15 July.

“This system is used to record and register patients at the hospital. It contains the history of all our patients, including their medical records, prescriptions, health risks and future plans for patients. This happened on Sunday, I was informed from the hospital that the system was not functioning,” she said.

“Everything we do at the hospital, including ordering pills are all done in this system.” There are no paper trails.

The Ministry of Health, announced on its Facebook page on 18 June that its systems were down, and asked patients to bring their clinic cards when seeking medical care to help their health workers.

Dr ‘Akau‘ola said the ministry had asked for assistance through the Australian High Commission in Nuku’alofa. “They assured us that a team will be deployed to investigate the problem further and will try to retrieve the system because it’s really difficult to find trails of the patients,” she said.

Speaking in Tongan at the press conference today, Dr ‘Akau’ola revealed the devastating impact on their staff after they discovered they could not access the health system.

 “The woman who looks over the ICT department of the hospital fixed the issue, or so she thought. Shortly after, I received another call that the system was down again.”

The Ministry contacted Datec in Fiji, an IT business the hospital works with.

“We reached out for help and Datec discovered that the system was hacked and the ransom was discovered, where we were demanded to pay a sum of money for the return of the system.

“I had a talk with our lady in the ICT department and she cried, I think she blamed herself and was afraid of the doctors. I assured her that this issue was bigger than us,” Dr ‘Akau’ola said.

“We’ve announced to the public that if you have prescription cards, please bring them along so that we can carefully assess your condition and provide you with the right services. I do apologize to the public for this issue but this not anyone’s fault, we should not be pointing fingers because this is one of the risks of digitization,” she said.

“What we need to think about now is how can we move forward from this, so that no one can hold us hostage using technology in the future.”

Dr ‘Akau’ola said that going forward, to better secure their systems they will be working together with a team from Australia through DFAT. 

“They will help provide methods which would cost [money] but it’s something that has to be done.”