FACTBOX - Sixty years of the NHS

LONDON (Reuters) - The NHS is 60 years old this year, having come into existence with the opening of the Park Hospital in Manchester on July 5 1948 under the principle that treatment should be "free for all at the point of delivery."

The new service was the crowning achievement of Clement Atlee's post-war Labour government and its principal architect was then Health Minister Aneurin Bevan.

Here is a brief timeline:

-- 1952: charges of one shilling are introduced for prescriptions. They were abolished in 1965 but re-imposed in 1968

-- 1954: Sir Richard Doll establishes the first link between smoking and cancer. His research among lung cancer patients had at first been expected to reveal that the disease was the result of fumes from cars, coal fires or even tarmac.

-- 1960: first kidney transplant takes place at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

-- 1961: the contraceptive pill becomes widely available.

-- 1967: Abortion Act passed, making abortion legal up to 28 weeks. The limit was lowered to 24 weeks in 1960.

-- 1968: Britain's first heart transplant. The unnamed patient died after 46 days.