Harefield Hospital

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Harefield Hospital
Established 1915
Opened 1919
Current Status Active
Building Style Single Building
Location Harefield Park
Alternate Names



History[edit]

Harefield Hospital was established in 1915 in Harefield Park, an estate owned by the Billiard-Leake family. They offered it as a hospital to the Ministry of Defence of New South Wales to treat soldiers from Australia who had been injured at Gallipoli and on the Western Front. The wounded soldiers who died while at Harefield are buried in the nearby Anzac cemetery in St Mary’s Church. They are remembered in a service held each year on Anzac Day (25 April).

After the First World War, the estate was sold to the local council and it was developed as an isolation hospital for patients with tuberculosis; this laid the foundations for the future of Harefield Hospital as a world-renowned center for the treatment of lung and respiratory conditions. After becoming part of the NHS in 1948, Harefield first became a general hospital and then a specialist heart and lung centre. Ground-breaking work, led by Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub in the latter part of the 20th century, included the first successful heart transplant in 1980 followed by the world’s first combined heart and lung transplant in 1983. This led to Harefield Hospital having the largest transplant programme of its kind anywhere in the world.

In 1998, Harefield Hospital merged with Royal Brompton Hospital, Chelsea, to become Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Trust before achieving Foundation Trust status in 2009. The organization is now referred to as Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust. [1]


References[edit]