The NHS at 70: A timeline in pictures

On 5 July 1948, 70 years ago on Thursday, the National Health Service (NHS) was born. We look at seven decades of the development of the NHS, alongside medical advancements, highlighting events that have been documented with archive photography. After the planning of an ambitious project to bring healthcare to everyone in the UK, the NHS was launched by Aneurin Bevan, the Health Secretary of the post-War Labour government. Bevan, seen below in 1945, was the chief architect of the plan to bring together hospitals, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, opticians and dentists under the umbrella of one organisation. The services were available to everyone, financed entirely from taxation with the central principle being that people would pay according to their means.