NHS ransomware cyber attack spreads worldwide

• Hospitals across the country have reported being hit by the attack
• Ransomware, holding files hostage in return for Bitcoin payment, is infecting computers in at least seven countries
• Patients are being turned away from A&E
• Operations are being cancelled
• Hospitals in the North, East, London and West Midlands have been affected

The NHS has been crippled in large areas of the country as part of a world-wide cyber attack.

The attack is part of a global spate of ransomware cyber infiltrations to hit companies and government organizations in at least seven countries.

Hospitals are understood to have lost the use of phonelines and computers, with some diverting all but emergency patients elsewhere.

At some hospitals patients are being told not to come to A&E with all non-urgent operations cancelled.

Russian police forces and Spanish telecoms firms were amongst other victims of the attacks, which involves a virus encrypt a computers files and demand payment  in bitcoin to de-code them.

In the UK, dozens of hospital trusts and GP surgeries are reporting problems, but the full scale of the problems is not yet known.

NHS hospitals across the North, East and West Midlands, and London are reporting IT failures, in some cases meaning there is no way of operating phones or computers.

At Lister Hospital in Stevenage, the telephone and computer system has been fully disabled in an attempt to fend off the attack.

Patients have tbeen told not to come to A&E and all non-urgent appointments and operations have been cancelled.

East and North Hertfordshire NHS trust said in a statement: “Today the trust has experienced a major IT problem, believed to be caused by a cyber attack.

“The trust is postponing all non-urgent activity for today and is asking people not to come to A&E - please ring NHS111 for urgent medical advice or 999 if it is a life-threatening emergency.

“To ensure that all back-up processes and procedures were put in place quickly, the trust declared a major internal incident to make sure that patients already in the trust’s hospitals continued to receive the care they need.”