{"id":190596,"date":"2025-12-14T00:43:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T00:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/190596\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T00:43:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T00:43:10","slug":"doctor-strike-during-flu-outbreak-would-be-reckless-says-starmer-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/190596\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctor strike during flu outbreak would be ‘reckless’, says Starmer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writing in the Guardian, external<\/a>, Sir Keir said the strikes “should not happen” and said resident doctors, formerly known as junior doctors, should accept a deal to avert industrial action.<\/p>\n

Sir Keir said as well as the government’s new offer, they had also given the BMA the chance to reschedule the strikes until after Christmas. <\/p>\n

“Don’t get me wrong \u2013 of course I would rather they were cancelled… But under the circumstances, I wanted to be sure we have left no stone unturned in our efforts to protect the NHS,” he said.<\/p>\n

The BMA said it will ask its members whether the government’s offer will be enough to call off Wednesday’s strikes.<\/p>\n

If members indicate yes, then they will be given time to consider the offer in more detail and a formal follow-up referendum would be held on ending the dispute completely.<\/p>\n

The offer aims to address problems for some doctors trying to find work and to provide more training places for newly qualified medics to progress in their careers.<\/p>\n

Health Secretary Wes Streeting made a similar intervention<\/a> to Sir Keir’s on Friday, warning strikes coupled with increasing flu patients would be a “double whammy” for the NHS.<\/p>\n

However, the medical director for the NHS in London, Chris Streather, said the flu situation was “well within the boundaries” of what the NHS could cope with and that hospitals were better prepared for large disease outbreaks since the Covid pandemic. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Writing in the Guardian, external, Sir Keir said the strikes “should not happen” and said resident doctors, formerly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[103,397,396,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-190596","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}