Junior doctors in England planning five-day strike in July

Junior doctors in England are planning to stage a five-day strike in July, a union representing them said on Friday (June 23). This is said to be the "longest single period of industrial action" in the history of the state-run National Health Service (NHS).

The British Medical Association (BMA) said in a statement that the walkouts will take place between 7:00 am (local time) on July 13 and 7:00 am (local time) on July 18.

"We won’t give up until junior doctors are fairly paid," a tweet shared from the handle of Junior Doctors read.

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The strike will result in more senior doctors filling in for the work done by junior doctors. They will prioritise emergency and critical care, which would impact thousands of appointments and pre-planned operations.

This is not the first time that thejunior doctors are on strike. They also stopped work forthree days earlier this month.Further, they also staged a four-day walkout in April and a three-day strike in March.

The dispute is over NHS pay and BMA has asked for "full restoration" of pay, which it says has been cut by 26 per cent. To mitigate the crisis, the government has offered a five per cent hiketo end the dispute.

Local reports have mentioned that the pay has decreased by more than a quarter since 2008, a period of time when inflation is taken into account. According to the BMA, many doctors are exhausted because of an increasing workload.

'Government can avert our action...'

Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi, the co-chairs of the BMA junior doctors committee, issued a statement on Friday, which read: "We are announcing the longest single walkout by doctors in the NHS's history – but this is not a record that needs to go into the history books. Even now the government can avert our action by coming to the table with a credible offer on pay restoration."

"The NHS is one of this country's proudest achievements and it is shameful that we have a government seemingly content to let it decline to the point of collapse with decades of real-term pay cuts to doctors driving them away," it added.

"With the 75th birthday of the NHS just days away, neglect of its workforce has left us with 7.4 million people on waiting lists for surgery and procedures, 8,500 unfilled doctors’ posts in hospitals, and doctors who can barely walk down the road without a foreign government tempting them to leave an NHS where they are paid £14 ($17.80) an hour for a country which will pay them properly," it said.

"It has been almost a week since the last round of strikes finished but not once have we heard from Rishi Sunak or Steve Barclay in terms of reopening negotiations since their collapse of our talks and cancelling all scheduled meetings a month ago. What better indication of how committed they are to ending this dispute could we have?" the statement further mentioned.

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