Doctors’ longest strike under way
JUNIOR doctors went out on strike in England yesterday in their longest-ever walkout.
They have stopped doing shifts until Tuesday. Consultants strike for the first time in a decade two days later then radiographers walk out on July 25-27.
That all means the NHS will be crippled by industrial action for 11 of the next 14 days.
Walkouts will further hamper attempts to reduce the increasing treatment backlog which figures show now extends to almost 7.5 million patients.
Impact
Prof Sir Stephen Powis, NHS National Medical Director, said: “Every new month brings more evidence of record demand across many areas of NHS care.”
Sir Stephen added that A&E units had just had their busiest June, “no doubt exacerbated by the record high temperatures.
“We enter an incredibly challenging period of industrial action, with the longest junior doctor strike action so far.
“So while staff will continue to work hard to provide patients with the care they need there is no doubt this period of action is likely to have the biggest impact yet.” Doctors’ leaders at the BMA are threatening to stage regular walkouts up to and beyond 2025 unless they are given a 35 per cent rise “if that is what it takes” to restore wages to 2008 levels.
Striking junior doctor Alex Gibbs said: “This is a last resort. We’ve seen conditions and care erode for 13 years.
“It’s taken us this long to have an organised, persistent set of strikes and it’s the last thing we can think of.
“It’s not a choice.We’ve been backed into a corner.
“We don’t go into medical school thinking this is what we’re going to have to do, but it’s what we’ve got to do to try and restore the NHS.”
Previous walkouts by junior doctors resulted in some 24,000 staff being off work on every day of industrial action.
The most recent strikes last month resulted in 106,000 hospital appointments disrupted over three days.