The National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) is currently grappling with a significant disruption to its services, raising questions about the resilience of its systems in the face of power outages. The NHLS confirmed that its information system, TrakCare, has been down since around 9 PM on March 16, 2026, due to a power outage affecting its head office in Johannesburg.
The NHLS is the sole provider of diagnostic pathology services to more than 80% of South Africa’s population, making this disruption particularly concerning. The outage has affected health facilities across the country, preventing access to crucial patient results. According to NHLS officials, technical teams are actively working to restore functionality, but the integrity of the information systems remains intact, with no compromise to data security reported.
As the NHLS operates approximately 300 laboratories nationwide, the impact of this outage is widespread. The latest disruption follows a previous major outage in June 2024, which was attributed to a cyberattack. This history raises further concerns about the NHLS’s preparedness for such events, especially given that the current disruption has been linked to erratic power supply challenges in and around Sandringham, where the NHLS head office is located.
Dr. Ntobeko Ntusi, a prominent figure in the medical community, criticized the NHLS for lacking an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) or other backup systems, stating, “The NHLS doesn’t seem to have a UPS or some other backup system, so that if there’s issues with energy, the whole system goes down.” This sentiment reflects a growing frustration among healthcare professionals, as the inability to access patient results hampers their ability to make timely medical decisions.
Anonymous sources within the medical community have echoed these concerns, with one doctor remarking, “We have had no IT laboratory system for almost 24 hours in the entire country. Crazy.” The disruption has forced healthcare providers to defer new investigations and has left them unable to access results for tests that have already been conducted. Dr. Ntusi further elaborated on the implications of the outage, noting, “When their systems are down, it means that new investigations have to be deferred, but importantly, it means, for those that have already been done, the doctors are not able to access those results.”
In response to the ongoing challenges, the NHLS is implementing interim contingency processes across its laboratories to maintain continuity of critical services. The organization has stated that it will continue to provide updates as progress is made toward full restoration of its systems. However, the full extent of the impact on patient care and laboratory operations remains to be seen.
As the NHLS navigates this crisis, the focus will likely shift to how the organization can improve its infrastructure and ensure that such disruptions do not occur in the future. The current situation highlights the critical need for robust backup systems and contingency planning in the healthcare sector, particularly for institutions that serve such a large portion of the population. Details remain unconfirmed regarding the timeline for full restoration, but the NHLS has committed to keeping the public informed as developments unfold.
