Happy 75th Birthday, NHS!

We celebrate this special year for the National Health Service, a British institution that touches all our lives

The NHS Arrives

Wednesday, July 5 marks 75 years of the National Health Service. Back in 1948, this was the day on which health minister Aneurin Bevan opened Park Hospital in Manchester now Trafford General Hospital-and launched the organisation which combined health services across the country to work as one UK network. Funded by taxation, its aim was to offer a health system available to all, free at the point of use.

The NHS's first patient was 13-year-old Sylvia Beckingham (later Diggory), who was suffering from a kidney condition

The NHS Today...

• ...sees about 1.3m people daily in England alone, equal to the entire population of Estonia.
• ...delivers 1,600 babies in England and 79 babies in Wales each day.
• ...hosts more patients in English beds each night than there are hotel rooms in London (140,000-plus) and 8,500 in Wales.

• ...cleans an area which equates to the size of Gibraltar, every day.
• ...provides up to 227 meals every minute in England, a total of 326,880 meals a day. That roughly works out the same as feeding a meal to the population of Shropshire.
• ...in addition to care boards and trusts, incorporates 220 general acute hospitals, 49 specialist hospitals and 246 community hospitals, plus 826 community providers and 6,925 GP practices in England alone.
• ...relies on staff from across the world, as it has always done, from the Windrush Generation of 1948 to today's workforce, which represents more than 200 nationalities.

A Community With Heart