British institution must be cherished

Among the financial woes and isolated scandals which have afflicted the NHS in recent years, it has been easy to lose sight of what a tremendous institution we have.

The principle of healthcare for all, free at the point of delivery, has become ingrained in the nation’s core.

Ask most people what it means to be British and the majority will mention the National Health Service somewhere in their answer. And yet, at 70 years old, it is a relatively new institution. There are many still alive who can remember life before its establishment and few would say conditions before 1948 were better than we enjoy now.

It is not only a system of healthcare delivery, still rare in the world, of which the NHS can boast.

Its workforce contains innovators, visionaries and world leaders in their fields.

Those serving on the frontline are doing so in increasingly-trying conditions and often for low pay. There is rarely a bad word said about them. It is not faultless but no organisation of such scale and scope could ever, realistically, hope to be.

Created at a time when today’s medical advances belonged to science fiction, it seems its ambition to serve the needs of its patients may be out-stripping its resources. Those in power, who paid such warm tribute yesterday, must ensure that does not become the case.