Dr Mark Porter, chairman of the BMA council, refused to say how strongly the body had backed the strike.
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British medical leaders have criticized junior doctors after they proposed a series of five-day strikes Thursday to take place over the next few months.
He conceded there had been “long and hard debates” on the council, which brings together different parts of the medical profession.
“Combine winter pressures with an already stretched NHS, alongside a series of extended strike action and it will nearly certainly result in a NHS crisis”.
Doctors are set stage full walkouts between 8am and 5pm on 5, 6, 7, 10 and 11 October; 14, 10 and 18 November; and 5 to 9 December.
This action will be followed by “further dates” which are yet to be confirmed, a BMA spokeswoman said.
In readiness, hospital trusts in the region are working to mitigate the effect of the first five days of strike action which Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has claimed will cause the cancellation of 100,000 operations and postponement of one million hospital appointments nationwide.
“Now they are saying we are going to have a devastating strike, the like of which the NHS has never seen before”, he told the BBC this morning, adding that he remained open to dialogue.
Mr Hunt said he thought a deal was agreed in May when the BMA put the proposal to its members.
Mr Hunt said he was prepared to talk further with the BMA – but only if they called off the planned strikes.
In May, the BMA and the government reached a deal to end the standoff but its members then voted to reject the new terms and conditions.
The BMA said it will call off the strikes if the Government agrees to stop the imposition.
“Despite our efforts to work with the Secretary of State to resolve this dispute, the Government has failed to listen, leaving us with no option but to take more industrial action”. The criticism yesterday from Jeremy Hunt and Theresa May, who accused striking doctors of “playing politics”, won’t have come as a surprise.
More than 30,000 people face having their operation cancelled during the longest strike in NHS history as junior doctors resume their fight against the weekend working contract.
She was asked by John Humphrys: “Is it really proportionate to remove half the doctors in the NHS, not just for a week but on and on and on?”
“We shall be taking steps to ensure that any patient who we know will be affected by the industrial action is notified in advance”. It is too important to be rushed to meet a political deadline.
“I have to say it beggars belief that we can be accused of playing politics in this when the stated reason of the Government proceeding is that it was in their party manifesto”.
The opposition from senior doctors has raised questions over whether the industrial action will go ahead as some were expected to cover for the junior doctors during the strikes.
“In my experience, from conversations that I’ve had with my patients, they are generally supportive of the junior doctors”.
Responding to the BMA’s announcement, Danny Mortimer, chief executive of NHS Employers, said the organisation was “shocked and saddened” that the BMA Council had supported the call from the junior doctors committee for further industrial action.
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Owen Smith, Labour leadership candidate, said: “This situation has been brought about by a combination of chronic underfunding, a botched reorganisation and the worst Health Secretary in the NHS’s history”.
