About LHL
LHL is a comprehensive member-based, non-profit health organisation with more than 54 000 members.
With our 240 local associations, 10 interest groups and 11 network groups, LHL is uniquely placed to follow up patients and family members both prior to, during and after treatment.
We have health care experts and peer supporters capable of answering all types of questions online, on the telephone or at hospitals and clinics throughout the country.
Through educating the public, teaching, treatment, follow-up, research and political lobbying, LHL has helped improve people’s lives since 1943.
And we will go on doing just that.
LHL (former the National Association for Heart and Lung Diseases), was founded in 1943, under the name of the Tuberculosis Relief Society (THO). Tuberculosis was then a major disease group in Norway, and around 10,000 Norwegians suffered from tuberculosis every year. Therefore, a group of idealistic persons identified the need for an organization that could fight for their interests and rights. One of the biggest challenges was to overcome people's fear of infection and the consequent exclusion from society.
The Tuberculosis Relief Society fought for many important social policy issues. The first goals achieved were better treatment options and living conditions, employment and social security and the construction of a vocational school for people that had suffered from tuberculosis.
Today tuberculosis is a rare disease in Norway, and those affected get good treatment and survive. The school is still in operation though, and now the students a persons with other types of disabilities.
After the decrease of tuberculosis, a new group of diseases emerged: cardiovascular diseases - hearth disease, peripheral arterial disease and stroke. During the 1970ies and the 1980ies medical and surgical treatment for heart disease improved. In Norway the capacity for heart surgery was limited and in the 1980ies it was established an air bridge where patients and health personnel were flown to United Kingdom for treatment. Again the idealists of LHL took action. They argued that it was unacceptable that Norway was unable to give adequate treatment to its own citizens. LHL at that time had a conference center one hours drive outside Oslo. This was transformed to at hearth hospital by building operating theatres and other facilities together with the congress center. Then the Feiring heart hospital opened in 1989.
Due to the smoking epidemic in the western countries, other types of lung diseases such as lung cancer and chronic obstructive lung disease have increased over the last decades. Glittre Sanatorium was a tuberculosis sanatorium, and went on to become a general lung hospital after World War II. The government operated the hospital until 1990, then LHL took over the buildings and started a modern lung hospital for rehabilitation.
As of 2023, LHLs has sold out all clinics and hospitals, and will continue beeing a sole patient organization.
The nature of the business and location
LHL represents and works for patients with heart and pulmonary diseases, stroke, aphasia, allergy - and their next of kin.
LHL is a non-profit organization. This means that any financial profit remains within the organization and is channeled to medical purposes. No earnings may be taken out of the organization.
Equality of opportunity
It is the objective of LHL to be a workplace where there is no discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity, national origin, race, language, religion or belief. LHL seeks to achieve full equality of opportunity between women and men and the association’s policy covers equality of opportunity; it seeks to avoid any discriminatory treatment on the grounds of gender in matters such as wages, advancement and recruitment. Traditionally, LHL has recruited staff from professional communities where men and women are represented equally.