THE core values of the NHS are being “undermined by privatisation,” campaigners have warned as they urged the public to fight for the health service on its 72nd birthday. 

Trade unionists, politicians and doctors paid tribute to the NHS on yesterday afternoon, 72 years after it was founded on July 5 1948.

The anniversary comes in the middle of the service’s most challenging year, in which it has treated over 100,000 Covid-19 patients and lost more than 300 members of staff to the virus.