First NHS baby Aneira says cuts nearly killed her girl
It breaks my heart to see the run down of the NHS. It is going back to the 1930s ANEIRA THOMAS THE FIRST BABY BORN ON HEALTH SERVICE
THE first-ever NHS baby has told how cuts to the health service nearly cost her daughter her life.
Aneira Thomas was born almost 70 years ago at one minute past midnight on July 5, 1948 – the day Aneurin Bevan launched the NHS.
Her mother Edna, in labour for 18 hours, held on until midnight so she and her husband no longer had to pay a shilling and sixpence to the midwife.
Edna gave her little girl the female version of Bevan’s first name. Aneira went on to become a mental health nurse and most of her family have dedicated their lives to the service, including her paramedic daughter Lindsey.
Lindsey, 43, had a life-threatening brain haemorrhage in February 2015.
But her mother said staff shortages meant no ambulances were available at the local station, where she works.
One from further away took half an hour to reach her. After deteriorating rapidly, mum-of-three Lindsey was in a coma for two-and-a-half weeks fighting for her life. Aneira told the Mirror: “Time is crucial. My daughter had to wait longer
for an ambulance because the nearest hospital had suffered cuts. By the time she got to hospital they thought she had meningitis and she’d stopped talking. Speed is crucial.
“It breaks my heart to see the run down of NHS services.
“I feel it is going back to the 1930s before we had the NHS.”
Lindsey had four brain aneurysms and at first could not move her right arm or form sentences. Doctors later asked her name, what day it was and who was the PM. She replied: “The a***hole who froze my pay five years ago.” Lindsey has fully recovered after brain surgery and is back at the ambulance station in Gorseinon, near Swansea.
The devolved administration in Wales is responsible for prioritising NHS spending but most of the total available is decided by Westminster.
It’s £16billion budget in 2009-10, dropped to £14.5 billion by 2016-17.
Aneira told the Unison conference in Brighton yesterday: “It should be illegal what the Government is doing to the NHS.”
Wales Ambulance Service NHS Trust would not comment on Lindsey’s case.