NHS at 60: ask the patients - but will they be heard?

03/06/2008

As the NHS prepares to celebrate its 60th birthday on July 5th, we are asking readers to tell us what YOU feel about the service: its achievements over six decades, your experiences of treatment - and what you would like to see for the future.

 

The NHS has always had a controversial history. Some readers may remember that when the government first announced plans for a National Health Service that would be, "free to all who want to use it" the British Medical Association (BMA) mounted a vigorous campaign against it. But by July 1948, Aneurin Bevan had guided the National Health Service Act safely through Parliament, thereby providing the British people with free diagnosis and treatment of illness, at home or in hospital, as well as dental and ophthalmic services.

 

By the time the great day itself came, three-quarters of the population had signed up with doctors under the scheme. Two months later, 39,500,000 people, or 93 per cent were enrolled in it, and more than 20,000 general practitioners (about 90 per cent) participated from the scheme's inception.

 

It transformed lives. A letter survives from an elderly Lancashire lady, unmarried, who had worked in the cotton mills from the age of twelve. She was overwhelmed with gratitude for the dentures and reading glasses she had received free of charge. The last sentence in her letter read, "Now I can go into any company." The life-long struggle against poverty which these words revealed is what made all the striving for the NHS worthwhile.

 

But now the big question is: can it survive as it is - especially with a huge population increase and increased longevity? And  should changes be made to the whole way we deal with healthcare in the UK? 

 

Questions such as these are being asked by organisations and the government - but no-one is asking patients themselves, who are both the customers  and shareholders in the NHS.

 

So we are linking up with the Patients' Association to compile YOUR answers - to just 10 questions. Just click onto the link below to take part.