Helping save lives
No one should die or be disabled unnecessarily during birth or from sudden illness, trauma or medical errors.
Helping save one million lives every year by 2030
We believe working with partners is the best way to achieve our mission.
From the beginning, Laerdal has worked with doctors, nurses, educators, researchers and leading industry organisations. Mutual respect and shared values have been the foundation of these relationships, but the key to long-term success has been the complementary nature of our missions.
Laerdal has been influential in furthering research and implementing practices that support our core research principles including the Utstein Formula for Survival, the Chain of Survival, and the Circle of Learning.
We use evidence-based knowledge to develop and continuously refine our product and service solutions. We believe we can make the biggest impact on helping save lives by our efforts to improve educational efficiency and local implementation.
Every life saved is someone’s mother, father, sister or brother. Someone’s child. Someone’s friend. One life is one more opportunity to make a difference in the world. One more Happy Birthday. One more future.
No one could imagine that Stein (49) a triathlete training for an Ironman competition, would go into cardiac arrest in his sleep. His son, Sondre (18), had been recently trained in CPR and was able to perform CPR while his wife received instructions from the emergency dispatcher on the telephone. Stein survived and plans to reach his goal of participating in an Ironman competition.
Dan (40) was 26km into the Shanghai Marathon when the runner beside him suddenly fell to the ground. Recently trained in CPR, Dan began to perform compressions and rescue breaths until the EMT team arrived. The runner recovered.
When Halvard was two years old, he was found lifeless, lying in the shallow water at the mouth of a drainage pipe. Halvard's father, Jan, had been recently trained in the lifesaving skill of CPR. He did not know that he would have to use it to keep his son alive until help arrived. Halvard survived. He is now 27 years old.
Svein Terje (48) was jogging on a treadmill when he collapsed. Two friends performed CPR until emergency help arrived. Svein survived.
Looking at Marshall Hastings (9), it is hard to believe that his heart stopped beating during a swim competition.
Due to swift CPR, Marshall Survived.
School teacher Louise Owen (30) slumped over her desk unexpectedly. She was 26 weeks pregnant and clinically dead. When the ambulance arrived, two colleagues had already begun to resuscitate her.
Five days later, Louise woke up in the hospital to a miracle. Her baby, Katy, had been delivered by caesarean section seven hours after her mother collapsed, and was fine.
Laerdal Global Health (LGH) is a not-for-profit company dedicated to helping save lives of mothers and newborns in low-income countries. Through partnerships with global health and professional organizations, LGH develops high-impact, low-cost training solutions.
The Laerdal Foundation was established to support research of best practices and practical implementations in acute medicine. To date, the foundation has supported 1 800 international research projects with more than 40 million dollars in funding.
Laerdal was established as a children's book publishing and toy company in 1940 with the mission of "creating children's joy."
During the next years, 100 million of Laerdal's Tomte cars were sold in 100 countries. Laerdal's Anne dolls became popular throughout Europe.
Laerdal's pioneering work with soft plastics would later be used to produce the first manikin used for resuscitation training, changing the course of the company.
Our founder, Åsmund S. Lærdal believed success was a result of the values he identified as the foundation of his business:
• The ability to listen
• Endless curiosity
• Practical problem solving
• Respect for the customer
• Hard work
• A passion for continuous improvement.
These values remain today.
The need for a lifelike manikin to train the new concept of mouth-to-mouth ventilation led Åsmund S. Lærdal, together with Dr. Bjørn Lind and Dr. Peter Safar, to develop Resusci Anne in 1960.
Today, more than 300 million people have been trained in CPR – most of them using Resusci Anne. It is estimated that at least 2 million lives have been saved . . . and counting.
The face of Resusci Anne has become an icon of modern resuscitation. The face was modelled after the death mask of an unidentified girl who was found drowned in the River Seine in Paris at the turn of the 19th century. The mystery of her death, speculated to be unrequited love, immortalised her as a subject of art and literature for years to come.
With the development of Resusci Anne and the change in the direction of the company, our mission became Helping Save Lives.
The image of the good Samaritan was chosen as the new company logo to symbolize Laerdal’s commitment to every health professional and volunteer who has learned how to save the life of a family member, friend, or stranger in need.
Laerdal is dedicated to our mission of Helping Save Lives through the advancement of resuscitation, patient care, and global health initiatives. Laerdal products and programs are used by voluntary organizations, educational institutions, EMS agencies, hospitals, and the military around the world.
Since 1949, Laerdal’s headquarters have been located in Stavanger, Norway. Today, Laerdal is an international company with more than 1400 employees worldwide with 400 employees working at the head office in Norway.
For more than 75 years, the Lærdal family has been committed to the long term development of the company. This has allowed Laerdal to stay true to its vision and mission, now and into the future.
