Junior doctors in UK agree to pay talks with Govt after 3-day strike
London: Junior doctors of the British Medical Association (BMA) and the UK government are set to enter negotiations over pay following a three-day strike that caused tens of thousands of hospital patient appointments and surgeries to be cancelled, media reported, citing the country's health ministry.
On Monday, junior doctors in the UK's National Health Service (NHS) started a 72-hour strike over pay, joined by civil servants, London tube train drivers and teachers.
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"We are pleased the BMA has now accepted our offer to enter talks based on the same terms as with the agenda for change unions - which concluded positively this week," the Department for Health and Social Care said, as quoted by the Sky News broadcaster.
However, the ministry also said it regretted that "over 175,000 appointments and procedures were cancelled this week" due to the walkout.
Meanwhile, the BMA said on Twitter that they were "fully prepared to call for strike action" in the event that any offer from the government is "substandard" or "where the talks lack sincerity or progress."
The union seeks to bring the salaries back to the equivalent earned in 2008, which translates into a 35% pay rise, the broadcaster said. The move would cost the UK government 1 billion pounds ($1.2 billion) on top of the 4 billion pounds that are needed to raise pay for other NHS workers.
The United Kingdom has seen a series of strikes by civil servants over the past months, with workers expressing dissatisfaction with the worsening economic situation caused by rising energy prices and soaring inflation in the country.
Medical Dialogues team had earlier reported that the Kerala Chapter of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) held their dawn-to-dusk statewide strike as announced many days ago to protest against the increasing number of attacks on doctors and demand for immediate arrest of the accused in connection with an attack on a Kozhikode-based senior cardiologist at Fathima Hospital.
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