On This Day in History: February 3

Princess Diana embraces a child with AIDS

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In June of 1981 the first official reports of a strange new disease were published. Fifteen months later they began to call that disease AIDS. Before that it was often referred to as “gay cancer,” and that wasn’t the only misinformation perpetuated. But on February 3, 1989, Princess Diana hugged a boy in a pediatric AIDS unit in Harlem, helping to dismiss the belief that the disease could be spread via casual contact.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: February 3, 1989--

She held and touched several children on her solo visit to the U.S., because she knew what she was doing. Diana was not uninformed on the subject; advocating for people with HIV/AIDS was a personal cause for the young royal. Say what you will about royalty and even Diana, this was using one’s fame for good. And it did help, because fear and misinformation were running rampant. Even after the term AIDS was coined it continued to be referred to as “the gay plague,” being seen as a disease that only affected gay men and IV drug users. And President Reagan (and his successor, Bush) took a “let them die” approach regarding the nation’s health policy.

The visit to Harlem Hospital was neither the beginning nor the end of Diana’s advocacy. Upon her death in 1997, Gavin Hart, Communications Director for the National AIDS Trust, said, “Diana was the foremost ambassador for AIDS awareness on the planet and no one can fill her shoes.”

There are no photos of it, but while touring the Harlem Hospital Diana saw a seven-year-old boy in blue pajamas looking up at her. “Are you very heavy?” she asked him. Then she bent down, picked him up, and hugged him for two or three minutes, his head resting on her shoulder. He was not the only one. There were several other children in the ward Diana touched, held hands with, and hugged. It made international news, and the royal family was pissed.

Allegedly, the Queen said to Diana, “Why don’t you get involved with something more pleasant?”

It wasn’t the first time Diana had dared to touch an AIDS patient. Two years previous she was photographed shaking hands, and not wearing gloves, with a 32-year-old man with HIV when she opened the UK’s first dedicated HIV/AIDS unit in London. Then she shook hands with 11 other patients. In 1991 Diana stated, “AIDS does not make people dangerous to know, so you can shake their hands and give them a hug … you can share their homes, their workplaces, their playgrounds and toys.” She continued to advocate for HIV/AIDS patients until her death, and her son Harry carries on her work. In 2016 Harry publicly got tested for HIV to help break the stigma of doing so and to show that it’s easy to do.

During Diana’s visit to Harlem Hospital the Director of Pediatrics said to the princess, “AIDS is a virus infection. It is a disease. It is not a crime or a sin.”

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