Arvid Noe

Arvid Darre Noe (1946–1976) is the alias of a sailor who is the first person known to have contracted HIV and died from AIDS outside of the United States. He is the second person confirmed to have died from AIDS, after Robert Rayford, a teenager from St. Louis, Missouri, who died in May 1969. The true identity of Arvid Noe is unknown and names and places of his life may have been changed to help conceal his identity.

Illness and death

Noe began his career as a sailor in 1961, when he was 15 years old. Journalist Edward Hooper established that Noe had twice visited Africa as a sailor; first from mid-1961 to mid-1962 when Noe worked on the merchant vessel Hoegh Aronde, which traveled the west coast of Africa to Douala, Cameroon. Noe was treated for gonorrhea on this journey. He returned to Africa in 1964, when he reached the port city of Mombasa, Kenya, in eastern Africa.^[1]

By 1968, Noe was no longer a sailor and was working as a long haul truck driver throughout Europe (mainly in Germany). Beginning in 1966 Noe suffered from joint pain, lymphedema, and lung infections. His condition stabilized until 1975, when Noe's symptoms worsened, he developed motor control difficulties and dementia, and died. His wife grew ill with similar symptoms; she and their nine-year-old daughter both died in 1977.

Later investigations

Approximately a decade after Noe's death, tests by Dr. Stig Sophus Frøland of the Oslo National Hospital concluded that blood samples from Noe, his daughter and wife all tested positive for HIV.^[2]

Based on research conducted after his death, Noe is believed to have contracted HIV in Cameroon in 1961 or 1962, where he was known to have been sexually active with many African women, including prostitutes.^[3] Noe was infected with HIV-1 group O, which is known to have been prevalent in Cameroon in the early 1960s^{[citation needed]}.

During his tenure as a truck driver, from 1968 to 1972, Noe picked up many prostitutes and almost certainly gave some HIV; these women almost certainly passed the disease on to other clients.^[4]

References

See also

• Timeline of early AIDS cases
• Robert R. — 15-year-old St. Louis teenager who was the first confirmed death from AIDS in North America; died 1969.
• Grethe Rask — Danish physician infected in 1972 while performing surgery; died in 1977.
• Gaëtan Dugas — homosexual Canadian flight attendant who infected between 245-350 gay men from 1979 until his death in 1984, called Patient Zero by author Randy Shilts.