Grethe Rask

Margrethe P. Rask (1930 – December 12, 1977), better known as Grethe Rask, was a Danish physician and surgeon in Zaïre (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). After setting up her own hospital in a village called Abumombazi in 1972, she transferred to Danish Red Cross Hospital in Kinshasa in 1975. She returned to Denmark in 1977 after developing symptoms of an unknown disease, which was later discovered to be AIDS. Three and a half years later in June 1981 the Centers for Disease Control recognized AIDS. Rask was one of the first non-Africans (along with Arvid Noe) known to have died of AIDS-related causes.

Early years and Zaïre (1930–1974)

Born in 1930 in the Danish town of Thisted, Dr. Rask practiced medicine in Zaïre for a brief period in 1964, when she was recalled back to Europe for training in stomach surgery and tropical illnesses, and from 1972 to 1977, first at a small local hospital in the Zairian town of Abumombazi, and then at the Danish Red Cross Hospital in Kinshasa starting in 1975. She was likely first exposed to HIV during 1964. Her friend and colleague, Ib Bygbjerg (a physician specializing in communicable diseases), wrote in a 1983 letter to The Lancet that "while working as a surgeon under primitive conditions, she [Rask] must have been heavily exposed to blood and excretions of African patients."