Fight to save NHS
JULY 5 2017 was the 69th birthday of the NHS. Created by the Labour Health Minister, Aneurin (Nye) Bevan and opposed by the Conservative party, it was launched to provide health care and support ‘from cradle to grave’ on the basis of clinical need and not ability to pay.
The NHS established health care as a citizen’s right and created the awareness that the NHS belonged to the people.
Today, however, the NHS is under threat. A recent poll suggested that there is increasing public dissatisfaction with the NHS and worry that it will get worse.
In 2010, satisfaction was at its highest. What has happened between these years is transformation and gross underfunding of the service.
The Conservative 2012 Health and Social Care Act removed the legal responsibility of the Secretary of State to provide health care and currently in Stockport plans are being drawn up to make savings (cuts) of £156m to health and social care and to eventually close more beds at Stepping Hill hospital.
Around the country massive cuts and closures are taking place, the eventual aim being to sell our NHS to provide companies that will profit from our ill health.
It is our NHS and if we want to keep it as a fully funded, publicly owned and provided service, we will have to fight.
Contact your local councillors and MP and ask them to help to make sure that the NHS survives many more birthdays. Happy Birthday NHS. Deborah Hind Bramhall approximately 30 minutes and then were called in by yet another big smile, the lady cancer special nurse who explained, in the next 90 minutes, the operation.
Then, the main man himself came in - another big smile!
I would just like to say to my wife, Gail, all the staff at Stepping Hill Hospital and the district nurse team, a very well done!
What helped me through this time were the smiles of one and all. Well done, I say!
Yes, we do have to wait (people are late or do not attend their appointments) but I am here today only because of Stepping Hill Hospital to which I again say, well done!
If we could get the smile in a bottle, we should all take it every day! R (Bob) Wilson Stockport