A Belarusian Shone An Ultraviolet Flashlight On His Sick Leave Form And Was Surprised
- 30.09.2026, 9:45
The Ministry of Finance provided an explanation for what was observed.
“I realize, of course, that I’m not the first person to find out there’s a snake in here. But I didn’t know, so I decided to shed some light on it,”—with this interesting discovery related to our sick leave forms, a user messaged the editorial team’s chatbot Onlíner chatbot. “We didn’t know either—or hadn’t paid attention. And after Maxim’s comment, we decided to find out what kind of reptile is on our sick leave forms and what other measures are being taken in Belarus to protect them,” the publication writes.
It seemed logical to direct these questions to the Ministry of Health, but the ministry informed us that it is not responsible for producing sick leave forms at all—that task falls to the Ministry of Finance. This was unexpected, though, come to think of it, it makes sense: the Ministry of Finance has a securities department.
Incidentally, this was roughly the line of reasoning Maxim followed when he decided to examine the form closely:
— I remembered that security features are found on currency, in passports, on public transportation tickets, and even on butter packaging. I figured there must be something like that on a sick leave form too—it is, after all, a strictly regulated document. And I’ve had an ultraviolet flashlight for a long time: I bought it for fun—to shine on pebbles when my daughter and I were playing in the sandbox.
“Up to 7 million are printed each year”
As the department informed Onlíner, sick leave forms are printed at the “Paper Factory” state enterprise, a division of Goznak, in Borisov. The annual print run of sick leave forms ranges from 5 to 7 million copies.
The Ministry of Health orders the forms, and the format of the sick leave certificate is defined by Joint Decree No. 1/1 of the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection dated January 4, 2018 “On the Approval of the Instructions on the Procedure for Issuing and Filling Out Sick Leave Certificates and Certificates of Temporary Inability to Work.” The design of the sick leave form currently in use was developed at a printing plant in consultation with the Ministry of Health in 2019.
— “Document paper with a two-tone ‘bowl with a snake’ watermark and security fibers that glow under ultraviolet light is used to print sick leave forms,” the Ministry of Finance clarified. — The form also features:
security numbering ink that glows under UV light,
invisible images of a security grid and a bowl with a snake that glow under UV light,
and other anti-counterfeiting features and measures.
It should be noted that the bowl entwined by a snake is the vessel of Hygieia, an ancient medical symbol. In ancient Greek mythology, the snake and the bowl were used to identify Hygieia, the goddess of health, from whose name the modern word “hygiene” is derived.