BRIAN READE
Whenever I’m asked what makes me most proud about Britain I give the answer I’ve given all my adult life and never felt the urge to change. I answer in a heartbeat: “The NHS.” The horror stories I heard about how the sick who didn’t have money were treated prior to 1945 always made me believe it was the greatest achievement by our greatest government.
The experiences I’ve had of it as a father, son and patient have convinced me I was right.
Hours after my first child was born in 1990 he underwent a life-saving kidney operation at Liverpool’s Alder Hey Hospital. For a fortnight I stared into an
incubator as surgeons, urologists and nephrologists worked their magic.
For 24 years the NHS helped him lead a normal life until he needed a new kidney which I was lucky to be able to give him, despite being a different blood group – only thanks to costly NHS-funded treatment.
My week-long stay on the Royal Liverpool transplant ward left me awestruck at the levels of commitment, genius and love among staff whose professionalism never wavered despite working long, traumatic days and nights.
The result is that my son Phil has gone from having energy levels so low he could barely climb a steep road to looking the picture of health.
Two years earlier I watched my dad die in a new suite in Whiston Hospital which felt like a hospice outside a hospice. My mum had died on a mixed ward in the old Whiston hospital a decade earlier in what had become a Victorian slum. The difference between the death scenes was the difference between a Third and First World country. Or rather, a Labour government’s decision to build the new hospital.
A year ago I suffered a suspected heart attack. Within 10 minutes an ambulance had arrived and within half an hour I was met at a hospital door by a five-strong specialist team. Their
Tell us YOUR experiences of the NHS – from the life-saving stories to the horror stories, and what the NHS means to you. Email features@mirror.co.uk or write to: March for the NHS, Features desk, Daily Mirror, One Canada Square, London, E14 5AP
scans and tests showed it was just an inflammation of the sac around the heart. But then I spent three hours on a trolley in a corridor waiting for blood tests because A&E was overwhelmed.
Our NHS is the glue that keeps us together, one of the few things left that makes other nations envy us.
So why have we let it slide to the brink of bankruptcy?
Why have we tolerated already low-paid NHS workers having their wages frozen, forcing massive realterm cuts to their living standards?
And why don’t we stand up and try to save our greatest national treasure before it’s too late?