Security News > 2024 > June > London hospitals face blood shortage after Synnovis ransomware attack
England's NHS Blood and Transplant has issued an urgent call to O Positive and O Negative blood donors to book appointments and donate after last week's cyberattack on pathology provider Synnovis impacted multiple hospitals in London.
On June 4, operations at multiple large NHS hospitals in London were disrupted by the ransomware attack that the Russian cybercrime group Qilin launched on Synnovis.
To address this risk, and until blood type matching systems are working again, the doctors at the impacted hospitals have opted to grant O Negative and O Positive types to patients who cannot afford to wait multiple hours for alternative blood type determination methods.
O Negative blood types can be transfused safely to all patients, while O Positive can donate to anyone with positive blood type rhesus, roughly three out of four patients.
"The IT incident affecting a pathology provider means the affected hospitals cannot currently match patients' blood at the same frequency as usual," explains NHSBT. "For surgeries and procedures requiring blood to take place, hospitals need to use O type blood as this is safe to use for all patients and blood has a shelf life of 35 days, so stocks need to be continually replenished," the agency says,.
Major London hospitals disrupted by Synnovis ransomware attack.
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