Cancer Alliance MD thanks staff and the public across Cheshire and Merseyside on 75th anniversary of the NHS

The National Health Service is marking its 75^th anniversary as a much-loved organisation which touches the lives of everyone in the UK, treating more than one million people a day, increasingly those with cancer.

Cheshire and Merseyside Cancer Alliance Managing Director Jon Hayes has thanked the staff working in the NHS across our sub-region and the public who continue to support it.

When it was founded in 1948, the NHS was the first universal health system to be available to all, free at the point of delivery. Today, nine in 10 people agree that healthcare should be free of charge, more than four in five agree that care should be available to everyone, and that the NHS makes them most proud to be British.

More people now survive cancer than ever before but with an ageing population, the number of people with a cancer diagnosis in their lifetime is also expected to rise steadily. The NHS has always innovated, bringing in new treatments and improving the standard of care for patients, and this is exemplified in the increasing numbers of people living a good life beyond a cancer diagnosis. But more needs to be done to detect cancer earlier, when is easier to treat and outcomes for patients are far better than finding it at a late stage.

Jon said: “It is truly a remarkable achievement for the NHS to reach its 75^th anniversary – and to be an institution that continues to be embraced wholeheartedly by the public. At the Cancer Alliance we are proud to work in an organisation that strives every day to help the public, save and extend lives and show such compassion to patients and their loved ones.

“Those who work in the NHS across Cheshire and Merseyside do a fantastic job and they should be rightly proud that they work in an organisation which has so much history but is also forward-thinking, innovative and focussed on the future.

“I would also like to also thank the public who, since 1948, have supported the workforce and guiding principles of the NHS, a system which continues to be the envy of the healthcare world.”