Grethe Rask
Margrethe (Grethe) P. Rask (
1930 â€"
1977), a
Danish physician and surgeon, was one of the first non-Africans known to have died from
AIDS.
Born in
1930 in the Danish city of
Thisted, Dr. Rask practiced medicine in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (then known as
Zaire) 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. She was likely first exposed to
HIV during her time in Abumombazi. 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."
By 1976, Rask had begun to suffer from
diarrhea, swollen
lymph nodes, weight loss, and fatigue. When she finally returned to
Denmark in July 1977, she had contracted a number of
opportunistic infections such as
Staphylococcus aureus (staph infection),
Candidiasis (yeast infection), and
Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia (a fungal infection of the lungs formerly known as Pneumocystis carinii). Tests at
Copenhagen's Rigshospitalet revealed that Dr. Rask had a nearly non-existent
T-cell count, leading to a severely depressed immune system. She died of Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia on December 12, 1977. At the time, the doctors treating Rask were at a loss to explain her disease progression, which in retrospect, would come to be seen as one of the first cases of AIDS recorded outside of
Africa.
*
Shilts, Randy,
And the Band Played On, St. Martin's Press, 1987
*Bygbjerg, I. C.,
AIDS in a Danish Surgeon (Zaire, 1976), The Lancet, 23 April 1983
