July 13 (UPI) -- Tens of thousands of junior doctors walked out of hospitals across England on Thursday at the start of an unprecedented five-day strike over pay with National Health Service leaders warning patients of significant disruption with cancellations of operations and appointments.
The body which represents NHS hospitals said patients would be noticeably affected and that such a lengthy strike would be "really damaging for the NHS in terms of first and foremost patients, but also cost."
"The last junior doctors' strike cost the NHS in terms of direct cost around $130 million, and then of course there's the impact on progress towards delivering waiting list reduction, so this is really difficult and challenging, and we do need urgently a resolution to this industrial action," said NHS Providers Chief Executive Julian Hartley.
Junior doctors -- any hospital doctor who has yet to become a specialist -- are seeking a 35% pay raise which they say is required to correct a real-terms cut in their earnings over the past 15 years due to inflation.
An offer of 5% has already been rejected and a recommendation of 6% by the government's pay review body is likely to receive the same response after their Scottish colleagues accepted a 12.4% rise last week.
Consultants, senior specialists, are providing cover for their junior colleagues but the strike, the fourth since March, comes with waiting lists at their longest in 16 years with 7.47 million people awaiting hospital treatment at the end of May, up from 7.42 million at the end of April. Consultants are staging their own two-day strike two days after the current strike ends Tuesday.
The Westminster government criticized the doctors with Health Secretary Steve Barclay calling their pay demand "unreasonable" and saying the strike would put patient safety at risk.
The doctor's union, the British Medical Association, in turn, criticized the government for refusing to negotiate with doctors who plan to strike as being "out of keeping with all norms of industrial action."
"Today marks the start of the longest single walkout by doctors in the NHS's history, but this is still not a record that needs to go into the history books," said BMA spokesmen Robert Laurenson and Vivek Trivedi.
"We can call this strike off today if the U.K. government will simply follow the example of the government in Scotland and drop their nonsensical precondition of not talking whilst strikes are announced and produce an offer which is credible to the doctors they are speaking with.
"The pay offer on the table to junior doctors in Scotland and how it was reached throws into sharp relief the obstinate approach being taken by the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary, Steve Barclay," the spokesmen said.
"The Health Secretary has said there can be no talks while strikes are planned -- Scotland has proved him wrong. He said above 5% wasn't realistic -- Scotland proved him wrong. He refused to even acknowledge the concept of pay restoration -- Scotland proved this is not only possible but essential."
Doctors had a right to expect talks to continue right down to the wire to reach a deal without having to resort to striking, the BMA spokesmen added.
"The complete inflexibility we see from the UK government today is baffling, frustrating and ultimately destructive for everyone who wants waiting lists go down and NHS staffing numbers go up."
NHS consultants in England are set to walk out July 20-21 after BMA voting members last month voted overwhelmingly to strike, although it is unclear how many of the more than 58,000 consultants will take part.
