Hospital doctors in England have commenced their longest strike action yet in a move that health bosses fear will put pressure on services at the busiest time of year.
Doctors below the consultant level join picket lines from 0700 GMT to the same time on Saturday in a major escalation of their long-running pay dispute.
Six more days of industrial action are planned from January 3.
The strike came at one of the busiest times of the year for the National Health Service, as it encounters increased pressure from seasonal respiratory illnesses.
The strike has been criticized by UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and hospital leaders, who have labelled the lengthy walkout as their “worst fears realized.”
Sunak said: “We would encourage junior doctors to consider carefully the extremely significant impact striking at such a challenging time will have both on the NHS and for individual patients and to return to talks.”
The British Medical Association announced the strike earlier in December after a breakdown in talks with the government.
The union said junior doctors have been offered a 3 percent increase on top of the average 8.8 percent increase they were given earlier this year.
The union rejected the offer because the cash would be divided unevenly across different doctor grades and would “still amount to pay cuts for many doctors”.
Health policy is a delegated matter for the administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, with the UK government supervising England.
In Wales, junior doctors are due to walk out for 72 hours from January 15 while those in Northern Ireland are being balloted for potential strike action.
Their Scottish counterparts have agreed a deal with the government in Edinburgh.
The NHS normally sees an increase in the number of people in hospital in the two weeks after Christmas owing to people delaying seeking treatment in order to spend the festive season with loved ones.
NHS England’s national Medical Director, Stephen Powis, has warned that the strike would create “huge disruption” and “put the NHS on the back foot” as it enters its most pressurized time of year.
The service is already encountering huge backlogs in waiting times for appointments and surgery, attributed to treatment postponement during COVID and years of underfunding.
