NHS on life support as strikes continue
Doctors' dispute with govt continues as flu flares and waiting lists grow
Meanwhile, the waiting list for hospital treatment stood at 7.4 million in October, with 172,556 of the cases involving patients who had been waiting for more than a year, according to NHS England.
"I believe in workers' right to strike," UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said. "But the strikes … planned by resident doctors should not happen, they place the NHS and patients who need it in grave danger."
Jack Fletcher, co-chair of the BMA resident doctors committee, dismissed the government's latest proposal as "too little" and "too late" and said doctors "have no choice" but to return to the picket lines.
Resident doctors make up around half of the UK's medical workforce. Formerly known as junior doctors, they tend to be relatively recently qualified medical practitioners who are in the process of training toward a specialty, which can take a decade or more.
An estimated 38,500 outpatient appointments and treatments — including surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy for cancer — had to be rescheduled because of the last walkout, The Guardian newspaper reported.
Wes Streeting, the UK's health minister, has accused the BMA of having "juvenile delinquency" and resident doctors of being "moaning minnies" in response to the latest strike announcement.
Asked if patients are going to die because of the latest strike, Streeting told Sky News: "I don't want to be catastrophic about it, but it is a different order of risk, and I am genuinely worried."
Tug-of-war
Pay has consistently been the focal point of the long-running tug-of-war between the government and the union.
"The pure fact that there have been 13 rounds of strikes, just by that itself tells you that it is not a simple issue," said Sam Liu, an NHS consultant cardiologist and medical director at MEDii Health, a London-based private hospital.
The UK government has highlighted the fact that resident doctors have had an average increase in pay of 28.9 percent over the last three years, factoring in the 5.4 percent rise agreed this May.
