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Witness History: The birth of Britain’s National Health Service - the NHS

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17/11/2009 GMT

The birth of Britain’s National Health Service - the NHS

BBC World Service - Witness History, The birth of Britain’s National Health Service - the NHS

What happened at the beginning of Britain’s National Health Service?

As the US struggles to reform healthcare we take you back to Britain in 1948 and the birth of its universal healthcare system.

Three years after World War II - in 1948 -  the British Prime Minister Clement Attlee announced he would introduce a welfare state which included the establishment of social security and a National Health Service (NHS) so that Britain's citizens would be protected from the "cradle to the grave".

Seeing poverty at first hand had driven doctors and other healthcare workers to campaign for universal healthcare. The architect of the NHS was the then health minister Nye Bevan. 

The birth of the NHS was not without controversy, the General Medical Council (GMC) worried that doctors would be turned into civil servants. 

On the same day that the NHS was born, a young man named John Marks qualified as a doctor. 

"We couldn't cope with the numbers… one didn't realise how many people had needed surgery… who couldn't see a doctor because they couldn't afford it."

John Marks talks to Witness about the early days of the NHS.

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