Junior doctors in England began a six-day strike on Wednesday morning, an unprecedented length of time for Britain’s already hard-hit health system.

This January could be “one of the toughest starts to the year” for the NHS, warned NHS spokesman Stephen Powis, who urged patients not to refuse treatment, AFP and Agerpres reported.

After numerous actions in recent months, “junior doctors” — doctors with a status close to that of trainees in France — demanding higher pay have mobilized over the lack of a deal with the government in the face of an inflationary crisis.

“SOS NHS,” read a placard carried by strikers outside St Thomas’ Hospital in central London. “Young doctors are overworked and underpaid,” another sign reads.

The new strike by these doctors, of whom there are almost 70,000 in England, comes as the NHS faces a shortage of doctors and struggles to reduce huge patient waiting lists.

“We have huge queues because we don’t have enough doctors, the answer is not to cut wages and make us run,” said Robert Lawrenson, an official for the BMA’s junior doctors committee.

“A strike is the only thing this government listens to,” he added.

“There won’t be any doctors left” if the government doesn’t agree to a pay rise, said 30-year-old doctor Hamish Bain, explaining that many of his colleagues have emigrated to Australia and the United States. An increase is needed to bring them back “from abroad,” he said.

The NHS has expressed concern about the implications of the mid-winter move, explaining that “almost all routine care will be disrupted”.

According to The Times, a total of one million consultations have been canceled due to strikes by “junior doctors”.

“January is the busiest time of the year for the NHS, so these strikes will have a huge impact on our health system,” Health Secretary Victoria Atkins blasted on Wednesday, asking doctors to “get back to the negotiating table”.

A “junior doctor” earns around £32,000 (€37,000) in the first year of practice, the government says.

According to the BMA (British Medical Association), salaries have fallen by almost a quarter since 2008, adjusted for inflation.

The government held talks for five weeks in the autumn in an attempt to unblock the situation ahead of the busy winter period, and offered a 3% pay rise in early December, on top of the 8.8% average already given this summer.

But the BMA estimates that this will not cover the decline in purchasing power in recent years and is calling for a rise of up to 35% over several years.

One category of senior doctors, ‘consultants’, has recently increased from 6% to 19.6%, subject to a vote by members of the BMA union.

For more than a year, the NHS has faced a series of historic strikes by various categories of staff, including nurses.

Since mid-2022, there have been numerous strikes in Great Britain due to a crisis in purchasing power. Inflation, which had been above 10% for a long time, recently stagnated and in November was 3.9% for the year.