LONDON: Junior doctors in England started a six-day walkout over pay on Wednesday, the longest strike in the 75-year history of the state-run National Health Service (NHS), which will hit patient care during a seasonal winter peak in demand.
As in other key sectors over the past year, junior doctors represented by the British Medical Association (BMA) have staged a series of walkouts to demand better pay in the face of soaring inflation.
Junior doctors in England on Wednesday defended a decision to start their longest consecutive strike in the seven-decade history of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS). They said their wages have gone down by around a quarter in real terms under the current government, which has been in power since 2010.
“I’m here because we deserve better as doctors,” Callum Parr, an accident and emergency doctor from London, said from a picket line outside St Thomas’ Hospital in the British capital. The 25-year-old medic said he was $150,000 in debt after six years at university, and facing increasing costs including rapidly rising rental prices in the city.
“Our job is hard, we knew it would be hard, we went to medical school which is also hard, and we want to help patients,” he said. “But you also have to be able to pay your bills.”