At a minute past midnight on July 5, 1948, Aneira “Nye” Thomas became the first baby born on the NHS at Amman Valley Hospital in Wales. Like the NHS, she today celebrates turning 75.
Named after the service’s founder Aneurin “Nye” Bevan, Mrs Thomas describes the service as a ‘national treasure’ but feels ‘worried’ about its future. While she believes it will still be around in another 75 years, she thinks many British people take the NHS for granted.
“The NHS touches all our lives and we’re all guilty of taking it for granted, even I do at times,” Mrs Thomas, a former nurse herself, said. “In Wales, we don’t pay for prescriptions and sometimes I’m standing in a chemist and people are complaining about a wait of 10 minutes for prescriptions, and I feel like screaming ‘do you realise how lucky we are to have the health care system that we have’?”
