To NHS staff, past and present, we want to say thank you for all your hard work and dedication. We salute your tireless efforts to drive stroke prevention and provide ongoing treatment and care.

In this blog, we want to take a look back at a few key milestones for stroke care over the history of the NHS.

Historic milestones

There are so many milestones in the history of the NHS. We've selected a handful that relate to stroke prevention, diagnosis and treatment.

• 1948: the National Health Service is founded
  • With the birth of the NHS, healthcare services become free for all at the point of delivery.
• 1948/9: Windrush and recruitment
  • In June 1948, the HMT Empire Windrush arrived in the UK. Many of the 1,000 passengers started working in the new NHS.
  • In 1949, the Ministries of Health and Labour, with the Colonial Office, the General Nursing Council and the Royal College of Nursing begin a massive recruitment drive. They wanted to recruit staff from the West Indies to come work in the NHS.
• 1971: CT scans
  • The world's first CT scan takes place at Atkinson Morley Hospital in London.
  • CT (and MRI) scans are used to see what kind a stroke a person has had and where it happened in their brain.
• 1980: MRI scans
  • The first full-body MRI scan was taken at Aberdeen University.
• 2007: Robotic heart surgery
  • Robotic arms are introduced for use in surgery.
  • Just three years later, the first fully robotic surgery for atrial fibrillation is completed at the Glenfield Hospital in Leicester.
• 2017: Roll out of mechanical thrombectomy.
  • Mechanical thrombectomy is a way to physically remove a clot from the brain. You can read more about our campaign to improve thrombectomy services here.