THE NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE

Intro: The NHS is creaking under the strain of an ageing and unfit population

The natural lifespan of a human being was once viewed as being three score years and ten. But while a baby girl born in 1948 could reasonably look forward to a life that long, the life expectancy of a boy was less than 66.

How times have changed. Today, the respective figures for either gender are about 10 years longer, thanks in large part to the National Health Service which turned 70 on the 5 July.

Among its major achievements, the NHS has saved countless lives from infection or injury, eliminated horrific diseases like polio from the UK, introduced comprehensive vaccination programmes, and enabled the birth of the world’s first IVF baby. It has many other successes to its name.

NHS staff have become the heroes of modern-day Britain: nurses were last year voted the most trusted profession, with doctors a close second. Nurse Pauline Cafferkey, who contracted Ebola while working in Sierra Leone, recently told of how she was “astounded” by the level of care she received, with medical staff “putting their lives on hold and working round the clock” to save her.

And she is certainly not alone. The Commonwealth Fund, a US think tank, last year ranked the NHS as the best healthcare system in 11 leading countries, including the US, France, Germany and Australia.

The UK’s total spending on public and private healthcare is about 10 per cent of national income. This is lower than in the US (16%), as well as Japan, France and Germany (11%). The simple comparisons would suggest we are getting a top-class health service on the cheap; indeed, the NHS has been described in the British Medical Journal as the “world’s most cost-effective healthcare system.”

Yet, for all that, the NHS is clearly showing signs of decrepitude as it moves on from its 70th anniversary. Its success at enabling the average person to live an extra decade has created a vast amount of new work to keep the diseases of old age at bay. Meanwhile, poor trends of bad diets and physical inactivity have produced a surge in rates of obesity and associated illnesses, some of which are threatening to overwhelm the NHS.

While healthcare funding has been increased by both Labour and Conservative governments, the extra cash has failed to keep pace with the rise in demand, leaving doctors and nurses increasingly overworked and stressed as waiting times for treatment have increased.

However, whilst governments and health secretaries can change, we, the public, must share some of the blame. Most people bang the table to demand appointments and yet a staggering 1.7million, about 10 per cent, of them were missed over the last decade at a cost of some £200million. Many also insist on antibiotics when they are not needed.

If we wish the NHS to continue as part of the societal fabric of the UK, then some tough choices may need to be made. And, on this, the public may be more accepting of the need for change than politicians realise.

A recent poll found 75 per cent of respondents backed fining patients who repeatedly missed appointments. Plastic surgery for purely cosmetic reasons and other non-vital procedures may need to be cut or scrapped completely.

Laws that were enacted in applying a 5p charge for plastic bags resulted in an 80-90 per cent fall in their use. So, unless we can be persuaded to stop putting so much pressure on the NHS, perhaps the time has come to consider small charges for prescriptions and even GP appointments to make us all value them more.

For if the NHS is ever lost, we will rue the day we lost sight of just how worthwhile it is.