PATIENT appointments and other administrative services at the BDF Hospital were back to normal yesterday.
However, its website was still offline and a senior hospital official told the GDN that “was to ensure security”.
IT systems at the hospital had been down since March 20, prompting the cancellation of all appointments.
The outage also resulted in King Hamad University Hospital (KHUH) – a government hospital managed by the BDF – to take measures to protect its own network from a “cyber attack”.
“All our systems are back to normal,” a BDF Hospital official told the GDN yesterday.
“We have formatted all our personal computers and the back-ups have been recovered.
“This means our functions related to the hospital have resumed, which include patient appointments and follow-ups and other administrative functions – both with the emergency department and the in-patient systems.”
The official explained the hospital website would only be back online after it was deemed safe to allow access.
“Our website went down as the systems crashed last week and it is still down, just because we are not reconnected yet to the web portals and Internet,” he said.
“This is to ensure that all is secure and our systems are well protected before we open access, which should be within two to three days.”
In response to the BDF Hospital shutdown, an internal email was sent to staff at KHUH warning of a cyber attack on the national government data network using viruses and ransomware.
However, the BDF Hospital official denied knowledge of a cyber attack.
“We do not know anything about this (cyber attack), which has to be referred back to our (BDF) headquarters,” he said.
The BDF Hospital shutdown is believed to have contributed to a surge in patients at Salmaniya Medical Complex (SMC).
However, the Health Ministry did not comment when contacted by the GDN.
Sources added that some CPR appointments were also postponed on Monday, after systems at the Information and eGovernment Authority (iGA) office in Sanad “suddenly froze”.
However, the iGA blamed a “minor technical issue” for disruption and said all applications were processed.
“The Identity Card Service Centre had experienced a minor technical issue with the servers that lasted approximately two hours and subsequently affected all ID issuance branches belonging to the iGA,” it said in a statement yesterday.
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“All service centre branches promptly took action to avoid any inconvenience caused to applicants by manually taking copies of any required documents with accurate contact information.
“Hence, visitors’ applications were fully served and completed.
“It is worth mentioning that all online identity card services were by no means affected and customers were able to utilise the functioning services on the national portal Bahrain.bh to complete their transactions during the minor technical issue at the service centre.
“The printing of the identity cards was resumed after the issue was resolved the same day and visitors to identity card centres across Bahrain can rest assured that services are fully restored and operational.”
raji@gdn.com.bh
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