Diphtheria in the context of "Microorganisms"

A microorganism, or microbe, is an organism of microscopic size, which may exist in its single-celled form or as a colony of cells. The possible existence of unseen microbial life was suspected from antiquity, with an early attestation in Jain literature authored in 6th-century BC India. The scientific study of microorganisms began with their observation under the microscope in the 1670s by Anton van Leeuwenhoek. In the 1850s, Louis Pasteur found that microorganisms caused food spoilage, debunking the theory of spontaneous generation. In the 1880s, Robert Koch discovered that microorganisms caused the diseases tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria, and anthrax.

Microorganisms are extremely diverse, representing most unicellular organisms in all three domains of life: two of the three domains, Archaea and Bacteria, only contain microorganisms. The third domain, Eukaryota, includes all multicellular organisms as well as many unicellular protists and protozoans that are microbes. Some protists are related to animals and some to green plants. Many multicellular organisms are also microscopic, namely micro-animals, some fungi, and some algae.

Vaccine equity means ensuring that everyone in the world has equal access to vaccines. The importance of vaccine equity has been emphasized by researchers and public health experts during the COVID-19 pandemic but is relevant to other illnesses and vaccines as well. Historically, world-wide immunization campaigns have led to the eradication of smallpox and significantly reduced polio, measles, tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough, and tetanus.

There are important reasons to establish mechanisms for global vaccine equity. Multiple factors support the emergence and spread of pandemics, not least the ability of people to travel long distances and widely transmit viruses. A virus that remains in circulation somewhere in the world is likely to spread and recur in other areas. The more widespread a virus is, and the larger and more varied the population it affects, the more likely it is to evolve more transmissible, more virulent, and more vaccine resistant variants. Vaccine equity can be essential to stop both the spread and the evolution of a disease. Ensuring that all populations receive access to vaccines is a pragmatic means towards achieving global public health. Failing to do so increases the likelihood of further waves of a disease.

Alexandre Émile John Yersin (22 September 1863 – 1 March 1943) was a Swiss-French physician and bacteriologist. He is remembered for his work as a pioneer in microbiology and immunology. Yersin is the co-discoverer of both the Diphtheria and Tetanus toxins (1890 with Émile Roux) and of the bacillus responsible for the bubonic plague or pest (1894, with Kitasato Shibasaburō). The bacteria was later named in his honour: Yersinia pestis. Yersin also demonstrated for the first time that the same bacillus was present in the rodent as well as in the human disease, thus underlining the possible means of transmission.

The Pasteur Institute (French: Institut Pasteur, pronounced [ɛ̃stity pastœʁ]) is a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases, and vaccines. It is named after Louis Pasteur, who invented pasteurization and vaccines for anthrax and rabies. The institute was founded on 4 June 1887 and inaugurated on 14 November 1888.

For over a century, the Institut Pasteur has researched infectious diseases. This worldwide biomedical research organization based in Paris was the first to isolate HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in 1983. It has also been responsible for discoveries that have enabled medical science to control diseases such as diphtheria, tetanus, tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, influenza, yellow fever, and plague.

Baron Kitasato Shibasaburō (北里 柴三郎; January 29 [O.S. 17 January], 1853 – June 13, 1931) was a Japanese physician and bacteriologist. He is remembered as the co-discoverer of the infectious agent of bubonic plague in Hong Kong during an outbreak in 1894, almost simultaneously with Alexandre Yersin.

Kitasato was nominated for the first annual Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1901. Kitasato and Emil von Behring, working together in Berlin in 1890, announced the discovery of diphtheria antitoxin serum. Von Behring was awarded the 1901 Nobel Prize because of this work, but Kitasato was not.