Hiv, Vih, Aids, Sida, And Pwas

Syria
18th August 1996
World AIDS Day

The Bernhard Nocht Institute located in Hamburg is specialized for the study of tropical diseases. Nocht (1857-1945) was a medical doctor who was confronted with unknown diseases brought by the crews of ships from faraway lands. He worked to control the cholera epidemic of 1892 in Hamburg which claimed almost 9,000 lives and then set up the Institute. The stamp shows 4 pathogens as seen under the microscope. 2000

The French stamp shows two drawings of HIV/AIDS viruses and the equipment to reduce the chances of contagion. According to UN statistics the pandemic has taken the lives of over 30 million people as of 2018.

Karl Joseph Eberth, the German medical doctor who studied the causes of numerous diseases, described the bacterium responsible for typhoid fever (Salmonella typhi). Next to his microscope is a drawing of what they look like on a slide. The colored photograph shows them under an electron microscope. "Typhoid fever infects roughly 21.6 million people and kills an estimated 200,000 people every year." wiki citation. stamp of 1986

An interesting motif - an HIV virus being checked by a rope. The drawing of the virus includes the darker inner structure of this kind of corona-type virus as it can be seen in the electron microscope. According to UN /AIDS data, 1.4 million people died of AIDS in 2000 and this number was lowered to 700 thousand by 2018. In 2018 there were almost 38 million people living with HIV/AIDS. stamp of 1988

Dogs were trained to detect birds and bird products in order to prevent the introduction of bird flu to Australia but migratory birds carried the virus around the world anyway. For many poultry farmers the bird flu had devastating effects. Thank goodness there were not more than about 700 confirmed human deaths, but this number is difficult to estimate because more people may have died in rural villages in Asia without ever having seen a doctor familiar with the disease.

The present corona virus (CoVid-19) is closely related to the virus which caused the outbreak of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome). The disease was first documented in southern China and became a pandemic in 2002-3 claiming the lives of about 1000 people. It appears to have been contracted from wild animals, which are frequently eaten in China. The test for this virus was developed at the Nocht Institute mentioned a few days ago. Interesting design with the small hearts representing the corona, 2003.

Serbia's stamp of 2011 showed the HIV/AIDS virus in a drop of blood; blood transfusions were a particularly tragic cause of infection.

Another sheet of stamps depicting problems involving the Zika virus (named after the Zikaforest of Uganda where it was first located in a monkey). The drawing of the virus next to the affected child shows that it is not a virus with a corona, so the virus on page 2 is not quite accurately drawn. Transmission is by a mosquito. Red Cross/Red Crescent stamps, 2016.

A simple and clear message!

This stamp also has a good and simple message! 2001

This is another method for getting rid of a large virus with a corona!

I was wondering who first called a virus a virus: Dmitri Ivanovsky (1864–1920) was a Russian botanist, the discoverer of an agent that affected tobacco plants and realized that it was smaller than bacteria, which one can see under a light microscope. Martinus Beijerinck (1851–1931) was a Dutch microbiologist and botanist who confirmed these findings and coined the term virus, which means poison, to indicate the non-bacterial nature of the agent. Viruses weren't seen until the advent of the electron microscope decades later (photo of the tobacco virus, which looks like small sticks). A photo of Beijerinck - should get a stamp to honor his work!

The Bahaman stamp shows a few AIDS particles as seen in the electron microscope - the picture is colored because electron microscopes do not provide colored micrographs. These viruses are probably close to a cell of the immune system which is what they attack. 1995 World Aids Day; according to WHO data approximately 32 million people have died of the disease as of 2018.

"Tuberculosis TB remains the world's deadliest infectious killer. Each day, over 4,000 people lose their lives to TB and close to 30,000 people fall ill with this preventable and curable disease." citation from WHO. Robert Koch (1843-1910) announced on this day in 1882 that he had found the bacterium responsible for the disease. The Afghan stamp shows scenes from the transmission of the disease to its end effects.