Since her birth, the fate of this Welshwoman has been inextricably linked to that of the NHS, the National Health Service, where she herself worked as a nurse.

On the eve of her 75th birthday, Aneira, sitting in her daughter's living room near Swansea in South Wales, recalls her mother, Edna, often told of her birth in a small hospital at the foot of the Black Mountains.

"We were approaching midnight (...) She remembered that instead of telling her to push, the doctor kept looking at the time (...) and saying +wait Edna, wait+".

"She held her breath for a minute and pushed for me to be born at the exact moment the NHS was created," the first Western health system to offer free medical care to the entire population.

Aneira's name is a tribute to the founder of the NHS, former Health Minister Aneurin Bevan, also from Welsh.

"Greatness" of the United Kingdom

The NHS "is our national treasure. I am proud and privileged to be a part, even modestly, of this story," says Aneira.

"I really think that's what makes Britain great," she said.

And if she was already "proud" as a child to be known as "the baby of the National Health Service", it was only much later that she really enjoyed the NHS, which she considers a bit like her "extended family".

Like her sisters, Aneira Thomas became a nurse, in psychology, and worked in the NHS until she was 55. His daughter Lindsey, 48, has been a rescue worker for 24 years.

A striker carries a placard denouncing "unfair pay", "patient deaths" and "staff shortages" in the NHS on a picket line outside Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital in London, April 12, 2023 © Daniel LEAL / AFP / Archives

And she is eternally grateful to the institution for several interventions that saved her, but especially her children, Lindsey and Kevin, both victims of a cerebral hemorrhage.

"Lindsey was in a coma for some time and ... the care she received was beyond reproach," Aneira said.

Humiliation

But this 75th anniversary of the NHS comes at a time when the health system is experiencing its biggest crisis, out of breath after years of underfunding, and shaken by strikes for months, its staff demanding wage increases in the face of inflation.

Patients often have to wait hours to be treated in emergency departments or paramedics and months to get treatment, even in oncology.

For Aneira Thomas, the conservative government should stop "dismantling" the health service and entrust its management more to doctors and nurses on the front line with patients.

Aneira Thomas in Swansea, South Wales, July 3, 2023 © Geoff Caddick / AFP

But his most ardent wish would be for him to increase staff salaries in line with inflation, still at 8.7% in May, the highest in the G7, leading to a deep crisis in the cost of living in the country.

"Some (caregivers) use food banks, it's unacceptable," Aneira said.

She says she "cried" when she saw doctors, nurses and young doctors demonstrating in her city, even after their night shift. "They treat us, save lives, and then have to walk down the street. I felt humiliated that they had to come to this."

© 2023 AFP