The UK National Health Service, known as the NHS, is celebrating its 72nd anniversary Sunday at a poignant and difficult time for perhaps the country's most beloved public institution.
Its doctors, nurses and other medical personnel have been on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic for months, and dozens of their own ranks have died due to the disease.
Across the UK, billboards, posters and even small pencil drawings appeared to thank the nearly 1.5 million NHS health workers for their service.
In the trendy Shoreditch district of east London, this gratitude comes in the form of graffiti. The closed showcases were transformed into murals dedicated to the public health system.
Street artist Nathan Bowen told CNN he wants to breathe life into locked dead spaces to make it easier for front-line staff to travel to clinics, hospitals and care homes.
"When people walk past my art, it makes them smile. I want to inspire people. I want people to look at my art and go home and feel like this work of art made my day. It made my street trips, "said Bowen. . "Why should they be looking at old plywood when they could be looking at illustrations?"
On Saturday evening, the main buildings in the United Kingdom were illuminated in blue, the color of the NHS, and at 5 p.m. BST Sunday, a round of applause is scheduled to honor the sacrifices made by the medical staff.
A little history: Created after the Second World War, the NHS has always been an institution that unifies the British around a simple idea: public health care should be free for everyone.
Charges have been brought against the government for failing to obtain sufficient personal protective equipment and to protect health workers from ethnic minorities.
But when Prime Minister Boris Johnson contracted Covid-19, he was admitted to St. Thomas', a public hospital in central London, and later said that the NHS "had definitely saved my life ".
