Grethe Rask

Margrethe P. Rask (1930 – 12 December 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 the village of 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 infectious disease, which was later discovered to be AIDS. In June 1981, the Centers for Disease Control recognized AIDS. Rask was one of the first non-Africans, along with Arvid Noe and Robert Rayford, and one of the first women known to have died of AIDS-related causes.

She was likely first exposed to HIV in 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."

Illness and death (1975–1977)

Starting in late 1974, Rask suffered from symptoms of AIDS,