More than 8,000 children have had operations and appointments cancelled because of junior doctors’ strikes, new figures show.
Members of the British Medical Association (BMA) are staging a five-day walkout, which began at 7am on Saturday, in their tenth round of strikes over the past year.
NHS leaders are increasingly concerned about the mounting toll of industrial action on patients, including severely ill children and those needing cancer surgery.
Analysis by The Times shows that the three biggest children’s NHS hospitals in England have had to make 8,478 cancellations because of junior doctors’ strikes. This includes 3,857 cancellations at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, the country’s biggest NHS children’s hospital, which said it “cannot overestimate” the impact strikes are having on its young patients.
At Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool there have been 2,852 cancellations and at Sheffield Children’s Hospital there have been 1,769 cancellations.
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Matthew Shaw, Great Ormond Street’s chief executive, said: “In the past 12 months we’ve had a total of 45 days of industrial action, and I cannot overestimate the impact that the strikes are having on our patients and our staff. A resolution must be found as soon as possible.
“We are grateful to our staff for working with us to ensure we can maintain our critical services, including intensive care and urgent cancer care. But there has been impact on other services, such as elective inpatients and outpatients. We are sorry that some of our patients and families have been affected. We are doing our best to support them and reschedule appointments as quickly as we can.”
Hospitals have been affected by industrial action for one in every ten days over the past year, causing 1.3 million appointments and operations to be cancelled in total, including 7,000 cancer surgeries.
There appears to be little hope of an end to the dispute, with ministers and BMA leaders continuing their public spat over pay on Monday as thousands of doctors took to picket lines.
Speaking from a picket line at St Thomas’ Hospital in Westminster, Dr Robert Laurenson, co-chairman of the BMA junior doctors committee, said: “I don’t think the government wants to end this dispute. I think they are quite happy having the strikes happen. And I think they are failing everyone.
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“I find it difficult to understand if this is incompetence or malice. Either way, it fails everyone.”
Laurenson said Victoria Atkins, the health secretary, had “lied” when she promised to bring an improved pay offer back to the table.
Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, has insisted he does not want to “run down” the NHS and said strikes by junior doctors were to blame for the lack of significant progress on NHS waiting lists, which stand at 7.6 million. He told BBC Radio York: “When it comes to the waiting lists, in the last few months actually we’ve seen the waiting lists start to fall. And that’s because we haven’t had as much industrial action.
“Obviously there is once again industrial action, but at the end of last year we had no industrial action in October or November and the waiting list fell by about 150,000.”
The junior doctors’ strike will end at 11.59pm on Wednesday. Hospitals have been forced to suspend much of their routine care to cope with the disruption.
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Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: “Over the five-day walkout the main blow will be seen in elective care, where we expect cancellations before, during and after the strikes, including cancer operations, which will be majorly disrupted and hit with delays and cancellations. This will mean that some of the very sickest patients will suffer the most from the impact.
“This entrenched period of strike action has now gone on for far too long, and for the sake of the patients who need the NHS for their health and wellbeing, both sides must get back around the table and reach level ground.”
