This photographic exhibition, devised by Marion Macalpine, shows how we are on the brink of US style healthcare run for profit rather than patients. It reveals the consequences and risks of privatising the NHS.

The exhibition was created in 2014 and has been exhibited round the country since then. Some details relate to that period; but privatisation has been greatly extended. Corporate tentacles now reach into every corner of the NHS. £3.1bn of health services were privatised in 2016-17. The TTIP trade treaty has been resisted but other trade treaties continue to give corporates huge rights over our NHS. Brexit means the issues will live on in multiple trade treaties.

The NHS is undergoing yet another fundamental reorganisation. After ‘Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships’(STPs), NHS and social care are being reorganised into local Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) and in time Integrated Care Organisations (ICOs). ICOs involve outsourcing NHS services rather than providing them directly. The later exhibition panels explain how privatisation is encouraged and supported in this latest major NHS reorganisation.

The exhibition is hosted by Defend Enfield NHS (DENHS), a small group of Enfield residents drawn from the various fields of medicine, teaching, accounting, the civil service and local government, some still working, others retired. We came together in April 2016 and have attempted to mobilise local members from all political persuasions around NHS and Social Care issues.

DENHS shares the aim of the many local groups across the country to publicise and challenge in whatever way possible the dismantling of our national treasure, the NHS. In the words of Nye Bevan, the founder of the NHS:

"The NHS will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it."

We hope that viewing the exhibition will both inform Enfield residents and encourage more to join us in the fight to save the NHS.

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