National Health Stories

<p>Like a much loved elderly relative, the National Health Service has endured more examinations and diagnoses than any other public institution. </p><p>When Bevan first launched it, he knew that there would never be enough money to meet the overwhelming need, and successive health ministers have used a variety of tactics to try to manage its chronic health problems. </p><p>Sally Sheard looks back at this intensely political organisation and asks Jeremy Hunt, the then Secretary of State for Heal

<p>Screening the British public for the presence of disease, took the health service in a radically new direction. </p><p>It was no longer just about symptoms. Certain diseases could be detected before a person even knew anything was wrong. </p><p>Screening, however, has been fraught with controversy and, over the past three decades, breast cancer has often made the headlines.</p><p>The arrival of Britain's breast screening programme with mammography, in 1988, was welcomed. As it became establis

<p>At the start of the 1980s a mysterious disease, AIDS, appeared in gay men. There was fear that it would become a new plague. Sally Sheard tells the story of how activists, doctors and politicians worked together to stop the disease spreading. </p><p>Apart from a handful of individual doctors who saw gay men with Kaposi's sarcoma and a pneumocystis pneumonia,, there was no reaction from the government in the early years of the AIDS epidemic. The gay community took matters into their own hands

<p>During the 1980s and 1990s, patients contracting infections in hospital, that antibiotics could no longer treat, dominated the headlines. </p><p>The strict hygienic regimes, so beloved by matrons since the Nightingale era, had been undermined by a reliance on antibiotics. When one bacterium became resistant to an antibiotic, there was always another to fall back on.</p><p>But when patients became infected with a bacterium which had become resistant to Methicillin, a crucial antibiotic in the

<p>For many, the typical image of the British nurse includes their earthy sense of humour and resilience. They've been trained to conform to hospital rules and hierarchies, yet always find ways to cope with the pressures of this demanding career. But in recent years, this image has been shadowed by darker tales of nurses' lack of compassion. Sally Sheard explores the changing roles of nurses in the NHS: now they are all graduates and are likely to be found diagnosing broken bones in an A and E d

<p>In a series tracing the decisive moments in the life of our National Health Service, historian Sally Sheard explores the recurrent crises caused by lack of funding. </p><p>In 1987 a shortage of nursing staff lead to the death of a baby whose heart operation had been cancelled five times. Nearly 40 years on from the start of the NHS, the resources couldn't keep up with the demands of the patients. The government published a White Paper, Promoting Better Health, with an emphasis on getting GPs

<p>In a series tracing the decisive moments in the life of our National Health Service, historian Sally Sheard looks at reports that highlighted the inequalities in health service provision around the country. The Black Report was commissioned by a Labour government but the time it was published in 1980 Margaret Thatcher had come into power. The findings that people in deprived areas had poorer health than those in wealthy regions were not accepted. A second report commissioned by the Health Edu

<p>In a series tracing the decisive moments in the life of our National Health Service, historian Sally Sheard looks at the arrival of the babies people never expected to see - conceived outside the human body - the miracle of IVF births.</p><p>The NHS thrives on innovation, but sometimes it needs a more personal determination to keep going in the face of years of multiple set-backs. Both doctors and women looked in vain during the 1960s and 70s for a solution to infertility. Finally in 1978 Pat