Sir – Your leader and Reg Little’s front page piece (May 21) deserve serious attention.

An undergraduate in 1950, I returned to Oxford in 1959, excited to become a GP, the third doctor in a city practice. The NHS was in its early days and had transformed health care. Now in my mid-80s I feel despair about its future.

For many years as a GP, I delivered babies (or rather assisted a wonderful midwife) at home, looked after the children, treated the working-age sick, and cared for the old – in due course ensuring they died at home as most of them wanted. We knew most of our patients well, providing 24 hour care and “continuity”.

Patients came to the morning or evening “surgery”, sat in the waiting room and were seen – sometimes it’s true after a bit of a wait. If necessary a home visit was done – about 10 a day, and learning how patients lived was interesting and important. The recruitment of practice nurses – thanks to Health Minister Kenneth Robinson – in the mid 1960s was a welcome development.

I think this was the “golden age” of general practice and training schemes for young GPs such as the one in Oxford (which I was involved in) became popular. Medical students became interested too in general practice – as the first professor of general practice in the University, I was delighted to find this.

But now sadly it seems a different story. So what is to be done? I was disappointed in the recent election that the NHS was treated as a political football with parties vying with each other to promise a financial sticking plaster for the latest NHS problem.

I believe that, now over 70 years old, the NHS needs a comprehensive apolitical review. International comparisons show it is very good value and that primary health care (general practice) is a vital feature of any health care system but if we are to keep up with some other developed countries, we need to spend more on it. But how should this be done ?

Godfrey Fowler
Oxford