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’?”
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She says she has seen attitudes towards the NHS change and says the ‘interaction isn’t the same’ with GPs any more as people feel inclined to go private. She says there are no more NHS dentists in the village she lives in, near Swansea in Wales.
“My mother always was proud of the fact that I was the first baby born into the NHS,” she explained. “When I was a little girl, I remember hiding behind her skirt when she would say ‘this is Nye, my national health baby’. It was the talk of the village.
“It must have been amazing that people could afford healthcare, optical care, dentistry. I do worry now because in the village that I live, you can’t access a dentist without paying and GPs… the interaction isn’t the same. So I do worry about the future.”
Asked about her connection to the service, she added: “It was there for me the day I was born and will be there for me when I leave this world. It is our safety net, isn’t it?
“I feel sometimes it’s my duty to speak up and shout from the rooftops. If I’m in Cardiff, sometimes I sit in Queen Street and can see the statue of Nye Bevan.
“And we’ve got lots of visitors and they just look and see his name, and I think some people don’t know who he is, but before they leave, they do know because I tell them.”
Mrs Thomas said she believes children in school should be taught more about the NHS and what it offers people. “The young people today do need more education not to take it for granted,” she said. “I think (education about the NHS) should start from an early age, in primary school.”
She added: “When my both children were very ill, fighting for their lives, I was in Cardiff and I was looking up at his statue and it made me cry with thanks. It is our national treasure.”
