How Princess Diana turned the world's attitude towards HIV-infected people
'04.12.2019'
Source: Newspaper.ru
Princess Diana is often remembered as an icon of style or a tragic sacrifice of circumstances - but not as a public figure. And it is completely in vain, since it was she who managed to turn the world’s attitude towards HIV-infected people. On the occasion of World AIDS Day "BBC"Tells how Lady Diana, in her example, showed that the disease is not transmitted by touch.
More than thirty years ago, World AIDS Day was instituted - since 1988, the beginning of winter is a time when you can and should remember those whose lives have claimed this disease, learn how widespread it is now, and how to prevent it.
And also, to think about people who are living with HIV right now and who have a hard time not because the disease has not been studied, is not amenable to therapy, or spreads in an unknown way. Just despite the fact that in our time, every educated person knows that HIV is transmitted sexually or from blood to blood, regardless of a person’s sexual orientation or lifestyle, and that thanks to antiretroviral therapy, HIV-positive people can live happily ever after Of the most painful problems, stigma remains. People with this status are still treated with caution or neglect.
Almost the same thing was applied to them thirty-five years ago, when AIDS was unfairly called the “plague of the 20th century,” although it was already known then that it was not transmitted by airborne droplets. Then, to fight to ensure that people with this syndrome were not perceived as outcasts, meant to show exceptional courage and royal nobility. And if there was a person thanks to whom the most ordinary people understood that HIV is not plague or leprosy, then this is Princess Diana.
In 1987, at the Middlesex Hospital in London, the Princess of Wales opened the first UK ward for people with AIDS or HIV.
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Communicating with patients, the “People's Princess” shook hands with an 32-year-old patient.
She did not put on a glove - although even nurses were afraid to do so: this was a historic moment that, if not turned upside down, then at least slightly improved the attitude towards HIV-infected people.
“If a member of the royal family is allowed to go and shake hands with the patient, then someone at the bus stop or in the supermarket can do it too. It educated people, ”John O'Reilly, the nurse who worked in the ward, will evaluate this gesture later in a conversation with the BBC.
And this really enlightened people all over the world - while newspapers scared the AIDS epidemic, photos of Princess Diana, who continued to visit patients in specialized departments, convinced readers of glossy magazines, tabloids and weekly newspapers that HIV was not transmitted by touch.
In 1991, for example, she visited the hospice for AIDS patients in Toronto, a small department with 12 beds. As wrote later, in 1997, the founder of the institution, June Callwood, in Maclean's magazine, then there was so little knowledge about this disease that even the relatives of the patients were afraid to approach them and visited their relatives, keeping them at a distance from them. But Princess Diana moved from ward to ward, sat down on the bed and took patients by the hands.
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“HIV does not make people dangerous for those who get to know them,” Princess Diana confirmed in the same 1991 at a conference on AIDS-infected children. - So you can shake their hands and hug. Heaven alone knows how they need it. ”
Today, the case started by Princess Diana is continued by her youngest son, Prince Harry - in a world where there is therapy and people know more about HIV infection than in 1987, he supports organizations fighting the spread of the disease. “She wanted to know the patients who were dying, not as statistics, but as people,” he said last year at an event in New Zealand. “The year before my mother died, for the first time, truly effective antiretroviral therapy was developed for AIDS and HIV.” She didn’t live to the point where she became widely available and saved countless lives in the UK and beyond. ”
