British health care, poem


This 27 November 2019 British Labour party video says about itself:

REVEALED: the truth about the Conservatives, Donald Trump and our NHS.

By Sally Flynt in Britain, 3 May 2020:

21ST-CENTURY POETRY

Free for All by Sally Flint

i.m Doll Warner

Before she turned 10 they called her
Little Mother. The oldest of 11 siblings,
she knew about ailments — how to attach
string tight to a doorknob and extract a tooth.
She could tempt a TB victim with broth and starve
a fever. She knew diphtheria meant death,
that few people had money for medicine,
or a midwife. She’d race to a stranger’s house and boil
water, prepare rags and, often in the dark hours,
persuade a doctor to help for free. For years
she witnessed birth and rigor mortis, saved pennies
to put on dead children’s lids. If she was still alive she’d hunt
down her prayer book, find God and scream to Bevan:
Quick! Someone! Save the Nation’s Health.

Sally Flint is the founder-editor of Riptide short-story journal and Canto Poetry at the University of Exeter.

Aneurin Bevan was the Labour party minister who after World War II founded the National Health Service, ending a time when poop people could not adfford medicine.

4 thoughts on “British health care, poem

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