Tonga has refused to pay a US$1 million ($1.6m) ransom after hackers seized control of the country’s health IT system.

Hackers broke into Tonga’s national health database earlier this month, the Government said, locking out medical staff who have since reverted to paper record keeping.

The IT system stores confidential patient information and is used widely across the nation’s hospitals and clinics.

Police Minister Piveni Piukala said the hackers had demanded US$1m to relinquish control.

“Paying ransom is not advised globally, so it will not be paid,” Piukala told reporters yesterday.

Tonga’s Health Ministry said it was still investigating the scale of the “cyber intrusion and what data may have been affected”.

A team of cyber security experts from Australia have been dispatched to help, the Health Ministry said.

Hackers are increasingly preying on vulnerable computer systems in Pacific Island nations.

Government services in Vanuatu were briefly crippled by a cyberattack in 2022, while Fiji, Samoa and Palau have all been targeted by hackers in recent years.

- Agence France-Presse