AIDS on Stamps

AIDS on Stamps showcases how the AIDS epidemic has been seen on stamps from around the world.

News

July 14, 2010: The world marches ever onward and with it has come a new AIDS stamp, this time from the Republic of Moldova. If you're wondering where Moldova is, you're not alone -- I had to look it up on Wikipedia.

Moldova, as I learned, is a landlocked country between Romania and Ukraine. It is part of the former Soviet Union and has a population of about 3.5 million people. About a quarter of the population lives on less than $2/day, and it aspires to become a part of the European Union. Interestingly enough, communists are the largest political power in Parliment with 48 (out of 101) seats, although they are not in control of the government. Control resides in an alliance of four other Western-leaning political parties that together had just enough seats to form a majority.

On the subject of AIDS, the CIA World Factbook tells me that Moldova has a 0.4% prevalence of HIV (2007 estimate). That ranks it #81 in the world and is the same rate as Canada (ranked #80). In case you're wondering, Swaziland is #1 at 26.10%. The USA is at #70 at 0.6%. The UK is at #95 with 0.2%. Below ranking #138 (Cuba at 0.1%) the list becomes fairly inaccurate with a number of countries listed using 2001 estimates.

Anyway, I digress. Here is the 2010 Moldova stamp. (Thanks to Gwen and Ricard for the heads up).

Gwen also clarified on my June 1st posting by pointing out another Comoros (2009) souvenier sheet with Luc Montagnier on it. Dr. Montagnier, as you may recall, is the co-discoverer of the HIV virus.

I have also updated the AIDS Checklist (.xls) with several new Scott numbers. As always, the latest changes to the spreadsheet are listed on the bottom of the document.

As a tangental issue that isn't directly AIDS related, some readers may be interested to know that Austria has released the first official "gay" stamp to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Rainbow Parade.
June 1, 2010: I hope you all are enjoying the warm spring weather, although if you're reading this website you're probably huddled in front of your computer instead of enjoying the outdoors. Fortunately for you, I have a number of things to report today.

First up, Cameroon has confirmed they will issue an AIDS stamp in 2011 as part of the Universal Postal Union campaign about AIDS awareness. I found the confirmation deep in this report (.pdf, in French) from the Cameroon postal service. It's hardly surprising they will do so, as they were one of the original seven members of the campaign. Nigeria has also confirmed they will release an AIDS stamp in 2011 in a similar report (.pdf). The other five countries were Brazil, Burkina Faso, China, Estonia, and Mali, all of which I would guess will release AIDS stamps along with a slew of other postal services.

Second, thanks to Ricard and Gwen for writing in about this new stamp. Monaco released this on May 5, 2010 to commemorate the 15th anniversary of... I'm not entirely sure. Some sort of anniversary of the UN AIDS program? I'm not entirely sure, but it does have a rather unusual design that I like.

Third, Thanks to Gwen and Ricard again for letting me know about these stamps from the Union of the Comoros (a very small set of islands between Madigascar and mainland Africa with a population of about 800,000). The first is a souvenir sheet from 2008 featuring a sort of hodge-podge of imagery ranging from the Red Cross to Albert Schweizer, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and the HIV virus. I don't have a Scott number for this yet but it's Michel 2078 (stamp) and BL468 (the whole sheet), and Yvert 147 (stamp? sheet? not sure).

In 2009 the Union of the Comoros released a sheet of 2008 Nobel Prize winners. Featured among them is Francoise Barre-Sinoussi who, along with Luc Montagnier, were awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine for their role in identifying the HIV virus. I don't have a Scott or Stanley-Gibbons number yet, but the Michel and Yvert numbers are 2267 and 1620 respectively. The top-left of the stamp also pictures what I believe may be an HIV virus, but I'm not sure. The fellow in the first stamp (click on the image below to see it) discovered another virus, so it's possible the top-left virus is his discovery. I won't know for sure until I get a copy of this sheet and read the writing.

Click on the image to see the full sheet.

Fourth, I have made some changes as to how AIDS on Stamps handles lists of stamps. Until now there have been three ways: 1) year-by-year, 2) a downloadable Excel-format (.xls) spreadsheet, and 3) a standard webpage that lists various information about AIDS stamps (but only showed Scott numbers). After consideration I have decided to get rid of #3, as all of the information is contained in the spreadsheet anyway, and virtually all users should be able to read the spreadsheet just fine. (Those few users without a program that can read the spreadsheet will find all the information from this option in the year-by-year listing).

What does this mean? Not much, just that the giant list of stamps, descriptions, and Scott #'s is no longer on this site. You'll have to download the AIDS checklist spreadsheet (.xls) to read it all. (Upside: the spreadsheet has Yvert, Stanley-Gibbons, and Michel numbers, along with information about famous People with AIDS on stamps.)

Finally, I have added a slew of catalog numbers to the AIDS checklist. Thanks to Joe @ GLHSC for the Rwanda number, and Ricard for the Yvert and Michel numbers. (As always, details on what's new on the checlist can be found at the bottom of the document.)
March 30, 2010: Sorry, never got this page uploaded after the last update. But I have a few things to report today.

First up, this 2008 stamp from Mali. I'm a little surprised I haven't run into this stamp before, although I suppose I shouldn't be as African stamps that are made primarily for internal use sometimes take a while to make their way around the world. I attempted to research this stamp and didn't find quite what I expected. I found a March 2, 2009 article (linked via Google Translate because it's in French) that mentions a new series of stamps being issued to raise awareness about the AIDS epidemic. There's a picture of what appears to be the unveiling ceremony, but unfortunately the featured stamp is too small to see any details.

Making things a bit more complicated, Mali is one of the seven original countries working with the Universal Postal Union's latest AIDS awareness project. So their postal service has lots of stuff going on, and will almost certainly be releasing additional AIDS stamps as the campaign goes on (probably in 2011 when the campaign calls for it). This stamp appears to have been previously released though as part of a local campaign against AIDS that also involves envelopes, brochures, and posters. Since this stamp is allegedly part of a series on stamps, there's probably more that we haven't discovered yet. So keep your eye open for "new" stamps from Mali. I'd love to see anything you haven't yet found.

Second, first 2010 AIDS stamp is available. This one, as I mentioned a while back, is from Jersey. It is part of a set about the Girl Guides (Girl Scouts).
February 24, 2010: You haven't heard from me in a whil ebecause there has been nothing to report. I do have one tidbit today though. The UN AIDS website has an article on Brazil joining the UPU's anti-AIDS campaign. The article has a small section that says, "a special stamp has also been developed, containing the symbol of the campaign.". The article did not say when the stamp will be available. I looked on the Brazilian postal service website for it but didn't see anything more. (The fact that I cannot read Portuguese didn't help though.)
December 24, 2009: Just a quick gift to y'all before I head out for several weeks of family and fun in both Iowa and Hawaii -- a new page on the website about local posts and the AIDS stamps they have released over the years. It's a work in progress -- my primary source of information is only up to "E" in his alphabetical research of the subject. So far we have discovered three stamps though, and I wanted to give y'all a link before I head out for the holidays.

I'll provide a more detailed update in a month or so when I'm back from my trips and the subject is more fully researched. In the meantime, the new page has an explanation of what local posts are (for those of you who are not walking philatelic dictionaries).
December 22, 2009: It's only been four days since my last update but there are a few things to report.

First, this souvenir sheet from Nigeria. We've had the stamps listed or some time, but never this sheet.

Second, an update on the oh-so-rare Rwanda (2003) stamps. As I posted earlier this year, the Scott Guide assigned two of the stamps official numbers. They said they were trying to establish that the other two had actually been released, at which point they would be assigned number as well. Well, I am pleased to report that I purchased the remaining two stamps earlier this evening. I won't receive them for a couple of weeks, but when they do I will send Scott a letter along with detailed scans. I've been meaning to send them a letter about a number of AIDS stamps for a while now with information about stamps from Mali, Cameroon, and others. I'll let you know when that happens.

Third, there's an interesting petition going around in the United States. On World AIDS Day (December 1), the sister of Pedro Zamora kicked off a drive to urge the US Postal Service to release a stamp in his honor. Zamora, as you may or may not know, was a Cuban-American who was diagnosed with HIV during his junior year of high school. Upon graduation he became an AIDS activist and eventually became a star of an early season of MTV's The Real World. As he lay in a hospital dying, President Bill Clinton called him to thank him for all his efforts. Zamora is widely credited with raising consciousness about AIDS among school and college-aged youths. If I hear anything more about the petition effort or any positive results I'll be sure and let you know.
December 18, 2009: The holiday season has rolled around again and you know what that means -- yet another postal tax stamp from Macedonia. We didn't get one in March (as they do about half the time), but the good folks at their postal service are continuing their part of keeping AIDS in the public eye. At present I have only seen the stamp on Delcampe but I'm sure it'll be making the rounds of dealers in the not-too-distant future. Their postal tax stamps are never widely available, but they're not that hard to find if you poke around a bit, especially as the years go by.

Next up is this stamp from Greece. I was excited to see it at first, but on researching it I learned that it's just a personalized stamp. The faces on the left side of the stamp pair is one of eight or so pre-made stamp designs. The right-part can be customized as people see fit. I have included both "before" and "after" versions of the personalized stamp. So it's not an official AIDS stamp, but I have added it to the personalized stamp page.

I also realized that the full sheet for the AIDS stamp from Vatican City (2004) has additional AIDS text in the center. So I thought I'd add this to our listings. I already had the stamp, but it's worth listing the full sheet. If someone would translate the text for me I'd be glad to add it to the site as well.

Now I wanna turn to a not-so-pleasant subject: fraud. You may have noticed in the past year a lot of these Indian stamp booklets appearing on the web.

As you can see from the back of the booklet, supposedly only 250 of these were printed. What would be a collectors item among Indian stamp dealers though has been all over the Internet on auction sites. Dozens upon dozens of these are available. I finally took the plunge and bought one, only to discover that it was a blatant forgery. The booklet supposedly contains 100 rupees of stamps, but mine only contained 20. And they were obviously torn off a larger sheet and stuck to the top of the booklet. A very sloppy job if I've ever seen one.

I'm not the only person to have a bad experience with this booklet. Gwen, a long-time reader of AIDS on Stamps, bought a booklet earlier this year. Hers had completely different stamps inside than mine did, and again, less than 100 Rs. worth of stamps. She, like me, believes hers was fake as well.

In an effort to learn a bit more about this booklet, I contacted Sahadeva Sahoo, a former President of the Philatelic Congress of India. He said that Uttarakhand is a state located in the north of India near the Himalayas. They did release a booklet cover on December 1, 2008 to mark the observance of World AIDS Day. He stressed that it was more of a cover than a booklet, as they did not have a formal set of stamps to put inside. Rather, they were able to put inside whatever stamps they saw fit. (Most booklets of this type on the Internet feature a combination of AIDS stamps and stamps on breastfeeding. Mine arrived with four stamps about Indian national parks.) He said that India Post does authorize its "circle heads" to issue promotional products of this type to the philatelic community, or to permit a society to issue a promotional philatelic item. He was unfamilar with all of the fraud that occurs in regards to these booklets, but acknowledged that fraud does often exist.

I am continuing my investigation to learn what I can about what actual stamps were released in the booklet. I doubt any of us will ever be able to determine what are authentic booklets and which are forgeries. So for now I recommend that you do NOT buy this booklet, as it's almost certainly going to be a forgery and worthless. I'll be sure and post more information as I get it.

That's all for now. Happy holidays!
November 11, 2009: Two announcements today. First is this forthcoming stamp from Jersey, a British island off the northern coast of France in the English Channel. The stamp will be released on January 13, 2010 to promote the activities of the Girl Guides, a variation on the Girl Scouts. It's part of a five-stamp set and features the words "AIDS Awareness" along with a red ribbon.

It is worth noting that although the stamp has not yet been released, there is a dealer in India on eBay selling the stamps already. I fired an e-mail off to the Jersey Postal Service asking if/how they could be legitimate but am not sure I'll get a response. These stamps will be easy to acquire once they are officially released so I do not recommend purchasing them from this dealer in the meantime. You'd hate to reward a corrupt official in the Jersey postal agency slipping him stamp sheets before the official release date. Or worse yet, they could be counterfeit.

Second is another sheet of Philippines stamps. First there was 2006, now there's a similar variation in 2007. I don't know the Scott number yet but will figure it out next time I head to the libray. As with the 2006 sheet, the stamps are not directly AIDS-related, but the center of the sheet are the eight icons and accompanying text for the eight UN Milennium Development Goals. One of those has to do with halting the spread of AIDS and HIV.
October 29, 2009: Like every summer and early fall, 2009 has been quiet for AIDS stamps. A few things have come to my attention though so I thought I'd update the page with a bit of news.

First up, all those promised United Nations stamps are now available. Scroll down for pictures of them.

Second, I have added a new sheet of 2006 stamps for the Philippines. I don't know the Scott number yet but will figure it out next time I head to the libray. (I tend to put off these library visits to allow them to replace more volumes of the Scott catalog with newer editions). The sheet itself is filled with stamps that are not directly AIDS-related. In the center of the sheet are the eight icons and accompanying text for the eight UN Milennium Development Goals. One of those has to do with halting the spread of AIDS and HIV.

Third, I added information on a new PWA stamp, Ofra Haza, an Israeli musician who passed away this year. The GLHSC newsletter reported this as Scott 17731, but that number sounds awfully high to me. Since it's on a 12-stamp sheet I'm thinking it may have been 1773i and someone misread it. I'll update this paragraph when I figure it out.

Finally and most importantly, some interesting news on these Rwandan AIDS stamps...

The GLHSC is reporting (and I'm currently trying to confirm) that Scott is saying that to the best of their knowledge, only two of these were ever postally used. These have been given the numbers 1395-6. The editors will give the other two numbers when they are able to confirm their existance and use.

While I don't know which two Scott gave numbers to, I can confirm that the first and third stamps were both postally used. How do I know this? By pure coincidence, I purchased both stamps in used condition this morning. Talk about a lucky find! In all my collecting I have seen these stamps for sale. I did find a French website for trading stamps in which smoeone posted the fourth stamp, but by the time I contacted him he said he had traded it away.

It'll be another week or so until they arrive, but in the meantime I'm trying to find out Scott's information on the subject. I'll be sure and pass along to you anything I learn. These Rwandan stamps are the "Holy Grail" of stamp collecting. To be able to collect them is truly an accomplishment of epic proportions.
August 7, 2009: There is a bit of United Nations news today. First up, this stamp is now available from the UN Postal Administration website.

Gwen also wrote to say that on September 25, 2009 the UN will issue three mini-sheets for the Millenium Development Goals. According to Gwen, "each sheet has 8 stamps and includes various symbolic figures. There is one of a symbolic medicine bottle with a Red Cross and the message is 'Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and other Diseases'. No red ribbon. The other statements are for poverty, education, maternal health, child mortality, geneder equality, etc."

The text on these stamp sheets was written by UN Secretary-General BAN Ki-moon and reads (in English, German, or French depending on the sheet):

"Eradicating extreme poverty continues to be one of the main challenges of our time, and is a major concern of the international community. Ending this scourge will require the combined efforts of all, governments, civil society organizations and the private sector, in the context of a stronger and more effective global partnership for development. The Millennium Development Goals set time-bound targets, by which progress in reducing income poverty, hunger, disease, lack of adequate shelter and exclusion -- while promoting gender equality, health, education and environmental sustainability -- can be measured. They also embody basic human rights -- the rights of each person on the planet to health, education, shelter and security. The Goals are ambitious but feasible and, together with the comprehensive United Nations development agenda, set the course for the world's efforts to alleviate extreme poverty by 2015."

I managed to find this close-up of the icon on the AIDS stamp on the sheet. It also has some interesting accompanying text regarding sub-goals for this Millenium Goal.
July 27, 2009: Dr. Gwen P, an AIDS on Stamps reader who has an impressive medical philately collection of her own, was kind enough to submit an article she wrote about Dr. Lise Thiry, a Belgian research who appears on this Belgium (2007) AIDS stamp.
July 22, 2009: Sorry I haven't updated the site lately. There simply hasn't been anything to report until now. It appears that 2011 is going to be the biggest year for AIDS stamps since 2004, perhaps ever. Thanks to Gwen for the tipping me off to the news.

The July 27, 2009 issue of Linn's Stamp News contained an article titled UPU Promoting AIDS stamps for 2011. The article helped me find a pile of information about this program. Apparently the Universal Postal Union has kicked off a worldwide AIDS prevention campaign for that year. As part of that campaign they are urging their 191 member nations to release postal items between now and 2011 to promote AIDS awareness incouding posters, fact sheets, postcards, and brochures. In 2011 those countries are urged to release postage stamps to commemorate the discover of AIDS thirty years earlier. (Technically they are commemorating the publication in 2001 of the first scientific journal about what would come to be known as AIDS. The virus itself was not identified until 1984). The entire effort is designed to advance one of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015.

Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, China, Estonia, Mali, and Nigeria have kicked off the campaign. Over the next several weeks visitors to over 16,000 post offices in those countries will be presented with HIV prevention information. The ongoing goal of the program is to extend the campaign into as many of the 191 UPU member countries and their 660,000 post offices as possible. AT the end of the 2009 campaign the campaign will go globan and more countries will be invited to take part. In 2010 the campaign will enter a second stage during which postal employees will be better educated about the AIDS epidemic so they can pass on that information to the people that they meet. (In developing countries, postal workers have been successfully used to educate people they encounter during their daily delivery routes.) As stated earlier, the campaign will culminate with a wide display of AIDS stamps.

Postal services are also encouraged to use their initiative during this campaign to promote AIDS in other ways. For example, the UPU suggested that a post office might develop a special cancellation mark bearing the slogan of the program (see below). High-traffic post offices might also wish to invite health workers to educate visitors about AIDS and HIV.

Take a look at this logo and slogan for the program.

The slogan can be changed to reflect the cultural nuances of each country. For example, in Brazil the slogan reads, "Your post office cares. Protect yourself. Wear a condom." This is quite interesting to me, as that slogan would be considered too controversial for American social conservatives that believe condom use is immoral. While I think they need to get over it, the reality remains that AIDS in the United States is (unfortunately) a socially delicate issue. Hence why our AIDS stamp was a single red ribbon with no stated message. Very ambiguous and designed to minimize controversy.

Full information about the program can be found in the June 2009 issue of Union Postale (.pdf file).
June 10, 2009: A new set of stamps to report, this time from Guinea-Bissau Only one is about AIDS, the lower-left one featuring Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. Like the Sao Tome stamps that have come out in recent years, I have my doubts about the legitimacy of most of the Guinea-Bissau ones. I am planning to do something to find out whether they are valid or not, which I will explain to you shortly.

In the meantime, here are the 2009 Guinea-Bissau stamps. I have left together the photo of the entire set for context.
June 3, 2009: I have been continuing my research on the Rwandan AIDS stamps (more on that in a day or two) and made an interesting discovery. The Zimbabwe 2000 AIDS stamp (pictured left) is not the only one in the set having to do with AIDS. The stamp on right, although it makes no direct mention of HIV or AIDS, should be considered an AIDS stamp as well. It promotes the success of the country's New Start program (.pdf file), in which 20 HIV testing and counseling centers were opened around the country. Sure enough, some of the the writing on the stamp says "counseling and testing centers".

I checked the rest of the set over just to make sure none of them were AIDS stamps. One was on maternal and child health, another was on Rotary, a third was on RAPT (an anti-TB organization), and the fourth was Riders for Health, some sort of motorcycle health group.
June 2, 2009: On a whim I took a peek at Zazzle today to see what new personalized AIDS stamps they had. To my surprise they had over 70 new designs. About a third of those are by two artists who are clearly making a small business out of it, but many others are original in their design.

As always, I am on the lookout for personalized stamp designs, particularly from countries outside the USA. If you have access to images of personalized AIDS stamps from other countries, please do send them my way.

All of the new designs have been added to the personalized stamps page. Here are a sampling of the more interesting ones.
June 2, 2009: A few bits of news for you today. First, this new AIDS stamp from Sao Tome y Principe (St. Thomas and Principe). As with their other recent releases, I am highly suspicious that this is not an authorized stamp. It's hard to tell. St. Thomas engages in "excessive stampage" in which they release mass numbers of stamps that are sold to foreign collectors and not used domestically. As a result, it's ripe for counterfeiting as no one can reasonably be expected to keep track of what is and isn't an authorized stamp.

In this particular case, I am extra-suspicious because the stamp says it is for World AIDS Day 2009, but that won't roll around for another six months from now. Postal agencies often unveil stamps on World AIDS Day that aren't released for several more months, but this is the first time I've ever heard of a postal agency releasing a stamp six months early to celebrate an event.

Either way, here's the image I found.

As I wrote a few weeks ago, the UN Economic and Social Council is releasing on August 6 a set of six stamps. Gwen was kind enough to send me a photocopy of the announcement. Here is the scan of the stamp that I made. The set contains two stamps representing each of the three international branches of the United Nations. The AIDS stamp is in German for the office in Vienna, Austria.

Finally, I have an addition to the not about AIDS page. This is a stamp from Bosnia & Herzegovina (Sarajevo administration). It is being advertised on Delcampe.net as an anti-AIDS stamp. The larger writing is clearly an anti-drug message though. I asked the seller what the smaller writing said, to which he responded "droga nema poslijednju rije" ("drugs haven't the last word"). Seeing as this stamp appears to have no connection to AIDS, I am sticking it on the "not about AIDS" page.
May 13, 2009: A bit of news that deserves its own entry. Gwen writes that the UN Economic and Social Council is releasing on August 6, 2009 a six stamp set. One of the stamps is about HIV/AIDS, malaria, and cancer. Gwen writes describes it as, "an odd design but the red ribbon is there with the wording." This represents our first confirmation an AIDS stamp to be released in 2009.
May 13, 2009: I'm working on the site again. A few new things. First, here's a picture of the Nigeria (2003) AIDS stamps as part of a souvenir sheet.

Second, another version of this set of Guine-Bissau (2007) stamps. I have long been suspicious that they are counterfeit but have not been able to establish their validity eithe rway. Note that all four stamps have a border made up of smaller versions of the pictures of each of the four stamps. So there are a series of tiny AIDS ribbons in the border on all four stamps.

Then there's these two souvenir sheets of a Sao Tome (2005) stamp. Again, I am suspicious these might be counterfeit. Both Guine-Bissau and Sao Tome release massive amounts of stamps that have nothing to do with their country (and indeed, aren't sold within the country for postage) to raise capital from stamp collectors. Unfortunately, unscrupulous businesspeople have released any number of fake stamps allegedly from both countries. Since neither country bothers with any sort of "official" list of their stamps they are ripe for impersonation.

That being said, here are the souvenir sheets.
May 13, 2009: I have added several images to the website that may interest you.

First up is this 2002 Cameroon souvenir sheet. These stamps are previously known, but this is the first time I have had an image of their souvenir sheet. The Scott Catalogue states that other stamps in the series may exist, but I do not think any do. I have seen no evidence of them in all of my AIDS stamp research and am quite sure I would have seen something, somewhere if that was true.

Next, I have updated several pages on this site with new images. The counterfeit stamps and not about AIDS pages have both been updated with several fake Chadian stamps as well as a number of stamps that dealers commonly confuse with AIDS issues. I have updated the cinderella stamp page with a bit more information about the Lion's Club of Khumalo AIDS stamp.

Also a correction. The stamp I listed yesterday from Ghana is really from Tanzania. I got it confused with a similar 2008 souvenir sheet from Ghana that also featured George Bush.
May 12, 2009: Another update, this time about India. Although the country has only released one AIDS stamp, it has arguably done more to promote AIDS awareness than any other postal service in the world. Much of this has been done through their "Meghdoot" series of pre-paid postcards (I'll have an update about those soon), but also in the form of AIDS awareness information on stamp booklets.

In honor of the number of contributions that they have made (along with a few other countries), I have created a new stamp booklet page to promote AIDS awareness on stamp booklets. I urge you to check it out -- there are a number of new booklets you may not have seen before.
May 12, 2009: I have been horribly overdue in writing updates for this website. Never fear, it isn't abandoned. There simply hasn't been all that much to report. I have compiled enough interesting things though that it's time to post some updates. It's 4am as I write this so I'm off to bed in a moment, but I wanted to give you a quick look at this 2008 stamp from Ghana.

I'll post more tomorrow. There's a fair amount to report, even if this is the only new stamp.

Another update: This is Scott 2535a-b.

This website went online September 15, 2007.