LONDON (Reuters) -Junior doctors in England will strike for five days from Feb. 24-28 as part of a long-running dispute over pay, the British Medical Association (BMA) said on Friday.
The BMA, which represents around 50,000 junior doctors, said it was announcing the full walkout after the government failed to present an improved pay offer.
“We have made every effort to work with the Government in finding a fair solution to this dispute whilst trying to avoid strike action,” BMA junior doctors committee co-chairs Robert Laurenson and Vivek Trivedi said in a statement.
Junior doctors in Britain’s state-funded National Health Service (NHS) are qualified physicians, often with several years of experience, who work under the guidance of senior doctors and make up a large share of the medical community.
Britain’s health minister Victoria Atkins said the latest walkouts showed the union was not ready to be reasonable.
“Five days of action will put enormous pressure on the NHS and is not in the spirit of constructive dialogue,” Atkins said in a statement.
The government, which has agreed new pay deals with other healthcare workers in recent months, has resisted hikes it says would worsen inflation.
(Reporting by Farouq Suleiman and Sachin Ravikumar; editing by Sarah Young)
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