* In 1948 there were were 16,864 GPs. Last year the NHS employed 33,364.
* In 1949 there were 5,000 consultants and 125,765 nurses and midwives.
* Around 970,000 people now work in the NHS, including 33,647 consultants and 376,767 nurses and midwives.
* The budget for the entire NHS was £248 million when it was founded. Last year it topped £105 billion.
* In 1948 there were 480,000 hospital beds. There are now 167,000.
* When the NHS was founded, women spent on average 14 days in hospital after giving birth. They now stay in for 1.7 days.
* In 1949 waiting list numbers stood at 492,000. Last year the figure was 1,283,100.
* Prescription charges were introduced in 1952, then costing a shilling (5p).
They were abolished in 1965, brought back in 1968, and now cost £7.10 in England and £5 in Scotland. They are free in Wales.
* In 1958 the NHS launched a polio and diphtheria vaccinations programme.
* In 1961 the contraceptive pill was made available to married women. Eight years later the pill was prescribed to more than one million women. This year it went on sale online in the UK for the first time.
* In 1958, hip replacements were so unusual that patients were asked to return the hip after they died. Around 1,000 hip-replacement operations are now carried out every week.
* In 1978 the world's first test-tube baby was born. Weighing 5lb 12oz, Louise Brown was born by Caesarean section at Oldham and District General on July 25. More than a million children have now been conceived this way.
* In 1988 a breast and cervical screening programme was introduced for all women. The programme has detected 100,000 breast cancers and 400,000 cervical abnormalities. It saves around 1,400 lives every year, the NHS estimates.
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