Children are paying a heavy price for the failure to end NHS strikes

Editorial: This week – the busiest of the year for the health service – junior doctors embark on their latest walkout, the longest in the profession’s history. But, as revealed today by this newspaper, the hidden victims are thousands of children languishing in pain on ever-growing waiting lists. Their cries must be heard

Junior doctors are set to stage a six-day walkout from 3 January after rejecting a 12 per cent pay offer in December (PA)

The thought of a child in pain is something nobody wants to countenance, but that is the image that comes to mind over our revelations today that hundreds of paediatric treatments and surgeries – including lifesaving operations and cancer treatments – have had to be cancelled each day that NHS strike action has taken place.

More than 20,000 such surgeries and treatments were shelved in the last year, according to figures obtained by The Independent, which cover around a third of NHS hospital trusts – that figure increases substantially if the situation is mirrored across the whole of England. It offers a clear picture of the cost to patients of the strike action, while hundreds of thousands of children languish on waiting lists for treatment.

Junior doctors are set to embark on the longest national strike in NHS history when they walk out on Wednesday for six days. That will only increase waiting times, while the NHS Confederation says the industrial action will leave hospitals, GP surgeries and other services “skating on very thin ice” and in a “highly vulnerable position” given that it coincides with what is traditionally the busiest week of the year for the health service.