History of NHS in UK and Present Challenges

Running head: HISTORY OF NHS IN UK AND PRESENT CHALLENGES
HISTORY OF NHS IN UK AND PRESENT CHALLENGES
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1HISTORY OF NHS IN UK AND PRESENT CHALLENGES
National Health Service (NHS) is a system in the United Kingdom which provides
healthcare to all the legal citizens of UK. It is primarily funded by taxation from the citizens
of UK. Subsidized medicines and economical health care service is provided to the patients in
UK with the help of NHS. It was inaugurated by Aneurin Bevan who was the health minister
of UK at that time. It has been more than 70 years since the inception of NHS in UK and it
provides free service to cure infections and emergency treatments to the outsiders including
tourists in addition to the legal citizens (Campbell 2019). The service of NHS in the
healthcare sector has been a blessing to the citizens. It has been a particular help to the lower
income groups who cannot afford to pay for their health service. Generally they get treatment
and care from NHS for free of cost. NHS has certainly come a long way since its foundation
and the acceptability of NHS among the citizens has grown leaps and bounce in these 70
years.
Some of the significant historic events in the history of UK has influenced the
establishment of NHS. The Great Britain got involved in a war with the Dutch farmers called
as Boers in 1899 that lasted for three years. Britain had an assumption that the war will easy
to win as the Boers were inferior in terms of weapons they had. Still it was not a cakewalk for
the British army and their poor physique and health conditions were the primary reasons
behind that. The youth and the working class people were not physically fit at that time due to
malnourishment. To tackle this particular problem the Government introduced free meals at
school, compulsory health check-up of the children and special training to working mothers
(Edgerton 2018). By that time the Government was controlling the family welfare and
healthcare. The political parties protested against this and eventually the Liberal party came
to power in 1906. They mandated social reforms which had a long lasting effect on public
health. During the time of World War 2 the public health and the system of Britain had
improved but the condition began to deteriorate after 1939. Germany started attacking Britain

2HISTORY OF NHS IN UK AND PRESENT CHALLENGES
and cities were bombarded by fighter planes. This resulted in a huge number of casualty.
Emergency health service was established where hospitals and their staffs would work in a
collaborative manner. Even after the tragedy of Dunkirk the healthcare system controlled the
situation efficiently because of the organised and co-operative system that was established.
Government realised the necessity to maintain a public healthcare system to tackle
emergency situation related to public health (Edgerton 2018). Sir William Beveridge a civil
servant in the UK published a report in 1942 proposing the future of healthcare in Britain
post-war. He reported the five ‘giant evils’ and the components were “Want, Disease,
Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness”. The report influenced the foundation of the NHS post
World War 2 in Britain. NHS provided three different levels of service including hospital
service for emergency and severe illness along with accidents, primary care service for
opticians, dentists, pharmacists and community service. Community service included health
check-ups, ambulance service, vaccination, health education and nursing service controlled
by the local administrations (Campbell 2019). The common people of UK were greatly
benefitted from the development of the healthcare industry with the inauguration of NHS.
The main objective behind setting up NHS was to serve the citizens of Britain without
any kind of discrimination. The model of NHS was to provide service to everybody irrelevant
of socio-economic status of the individual. It was inaugurated by Aneurin Bevan who was the
health minister at that time on 5th July 1948. He had some core principles about functioning
NHS like: NHS should provide free service, it should serve and fulfill the needs of every
citizen of UK and the service should be provided based on medical emergency where the
economic condition will not be a measuring factor. These were religiously followed from the
inception of NHS till the 1970’s (Campbell 2019). In this period there were some difficulties
regarding the funding of NHS. In 1950’s prescriptions and dental care became chargeable
though these were generally exceptions in the NHS system as it was still mostly free at the