IN the late 1940s the National Health Service saved my life. I had tubercular meningitis and was not expected to live.

I was in hospital for a year and off school for 18 months. Prior to the formation of the NHS I would almost certainly have died.

Sixty years later, on the very day that I retired, I suffered a heart attack but barely three weeks later I was home, with my family, having successfully undergone a coronary triple bypass and an ablation procedure.

All this treatment was freely given by an organisation which, from the hospital porter through to its most eminent surgeons, saves lives wherever it can regardless of financial means.

It is, therefore, with increasing despair that I’ve watched successive health ministers treat the organisation purely as a market commodity and have covertly encouraged private finance.

The imminent advent of clinical commissioning groups must have private health companies slavering in the wings. The performance of private firms like Harmoni and Serco is hardly encouraging for patients who will inevitably fall into the hands of similar private companies.

Recently David Nicholson, the chief executive of the NHS, received a fearful hammering by a committee of MPs (Echo, Mar 6) but the real villains, the previous health ministers who had decided on such callous targets, were long gone.

VJ Connor, Bishop Auckland.