Margrethe P. Rask (1930 – December 12, 1977), better known as Grethe Rask, was a Danish physician and surgeon who practiced medicine in what was then known as Zaire (today 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 before returning to Denmark in 1977 following symptoms of an unknown disease, which was later discov...
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Margrethe P. Rask (1930 – December 12, 1977), better known as Grethe Rask, was a Danish physician and surgeon who practiced medicine in what was then known as Zaire (today 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 before returning to Denmark in 1977 following symptoms of an unknown disease, which was later discovered to be AIDS. Rask, who died three and a half years prior to AIDS being recognized by the Centers for Disease Control in June 1981, was one of the first non-Africans (along with Arvid Noe) known to have died of AIDS-related causes.
Born in 1930 in the Danish town of Thisted, Dr. Rask practiced medicine in Zaire 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...
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