An Oldham GP has reflected on her two and a half decades spent working in the NHS as it marks its' 75th birthday.

Dr Anita Sharma has been a GP for a third of the NHS’ life – 25 years.

Based at South Chadderton Health Centre, Dr Anita says she would diagnose the NHS as ‘poorly’ but said there was still hope for the service to be 'resuscitated'.

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She said: “Would I recommend people to go into medicine at this moment? I don’t think so. Things are just getting worse.

“I’ve been a GP with a special interest in women’s health. At 75 years I would say it’s damaged, demoralised, dangerous.

“But it can be resuscitated, changes can be made, we can make it distinctive and dynamic, like it used to be.”

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Dr Sharma was especially worried about the impact on women’s health.

She said: “If I focus on women’s health, I still have not seen a change or improvement in women’s health.

"Three-quarters of women feel the health service does not listen to them, we carry on saying it, they carry on listening to us, but they make no changes.

“Even though we women live four years longer than men, we live in poor health.”

Dr Sharma was also alarmed by the increasing number of young doctors and consultants leaving the service to find a better job abroad.

She implored those who plan to leave for other countries to stay but understood why they felt they couldn’t.

She said: “We are getting people from abroad. We can’t keep our doctors we are training here for so many years. They know how the system works, they know how the service is being delivered, they know who the healthcare assistant is, they know what the practice nurse will deliver, they know what the pharmacists do.

“Getting people from abroad, they’ve got no idea what the physician associate will do, what the nurse will do. We have to teach them, train them all over again.

“We have to retrain them now. Junior doctors are going on strike, then the consultants are going on strike. What does that tell us? We have to listen to them. They’re struggling, they’re suffering.

“If they struggle and suffer, what happens then? The whole NHS suffers, the patients suffer, the whole family suffers. That is not the wellbeing of the nation, the whole nation is now suffering.”

The Department for Health and Social Care did not respond to request for comment.