Seville Prosecutor’s Office Closes Case of Alleged Deleted Mammograms in SAS System. The Seville Prosecutor’s Office found no evidence of criminal activity in the case regarding missing mammograms. Investigations confirmed that no data was deleted; the issue was caused by a system overload. The incident sparked significant public reaction.
The Seville Prosecutor's Office (Fiscalía de Sevilla) has officially closed the investigation into the complaint filed by the Amama Association of Women with Breast Cancer, which claimed that mammogram results had been deleted or altered in Andalusia's medical archives (Servicio Andaluz de Salud, SAS). The review found no evidence of data tampering or disappearance. The problems accessing medical records were caused by server overload due to a high volume of requests.
During the investigation, experts reviewed the logs and reports from the ClicSalud and Diraya platforms, through which patients access their medical information. They determined that a surge in users led to information display failures, but the records themselves remained intact. The Prosecutor's Office emphasized that there was no internal manipulation, external sabotage, or unauthorized access to the medical archives.
Reactions from the parties
The organization Defensora del Paciente later joined Amama's complaint, with both groups demanding to know whether data had been deliberately deleted or altered. However, technical assessments and analyses requested by the Prosecutor's Office confirmed that the outage was purely for technical reasons. The servers were unable to handle the volume of requests, which resulted in the temporary unavailability of some information for patients.
The Minister of Health of Andalusia, Antonio Sanz, welcomed the prosecutor’s decision, noting that it confirms the reliability of the screening system, which saves many lives every year. According to him, all 2,317 women whose examinations were delayed due to technical issues have already received notifications of their results. Regional authorities promised to increase staffing and standardize protocols to prevent similar situations in the future.
Incident details
The head of Amama, Ángela Claverol, said that she has not yet received the prosecutor's official report and will refrain from commenting until she has reviewed it. It was she who, last fall, filed a complaint regarding the possible deletion of medical records from the SAS platform. At that time, the Minister of Health categorically denied the allegations and called for an end to the rumors about the system’s operations.
Women who contacted Amama claimed they could not find their mammograms and other medical tests in the electronic archives, and sometimes encountered altered file names or missing doctor signatures. However, the prosecutor found no evidence to support these claims. On the day the complaint was filed, authorities initially denied any data deletion, but later admitted that the server outage was caused by overload.
Political repercussions
The situation has sparked widespread public outcry and became a topic of debate in the Andalusian parliament. Inma Nieto, a representative of the Por Andalucía coalition, even displayed one of the controversial medical documents during a session. The president of the autonomous community, Juan Manuel Moreno, sharply condemned the accusations against SAS staff, emphasizing that only they could have altered the data, had this actually occurred.
Minister Sanz also took the opportunity to criticize the opposition, accusing them of trying to exploit the cancer issue for political attacks. He stated that such allegations undermine trust in the healthcare system and unfairly tarnish the work of medical professionals.
Next steps
The Seville prosecutor's office noted that closing the case does not deprive the affected parties of their right to challenge delays or protocol reviews in court. Meanwhile, the Andalusian prosecutor's office continues its own investigation into failures in the screening program, and the regional ombudsman's office is also conducting a review.
The Andalusian authorities have assured that they are working to resolve technical issues and improve the system to prevent similar incidents from happening again. Women who experienced delays in receiving their results have already received explanations and access to their medical records.
