STATUS UPDATE

Prince Harry Vows to Continue Princess Diana’s ‘Unfinished’ Work Breaking Down HIV Stigma

His mother “kicked the door down” when it came to talking about HIV, the prince said, urging people to get tested to help tackle the wrath of the disease.

Prince Harry has said that his late mother’s work fighting HIV is “unfinished” business that he feels “obligated to try and continue.”

Harry made the comments to launch a weeklong national testing drive in the U.K., in a video chat with Welsh rugby player Gareth Thomas, the first professional British rugby player to publicly come out as gay and who revealed his own HIV-positive diagnosis in 2019.

Harry said he was passionate about advocating for HIV testing because it helped break down stigma about the disease.

Harry said: “Once you get to meet people and you see the suffering around the world, I certainly can’t turn my back on that.

“Then add in the fact that my mom’s work was unfinished, I feel obligated to try and continue that as much as possible.”

Speaking of Princess Diana’s taboo-defying reachout to people with HIV and AIDS, he said “I could never fill her shoes, especially in this particular space, but because of what she did and what she stood for and how vocal she was about this issue, but it’s a converging of all these different pieces. I want to finish the job… There’s a way out of it, and if there’s a way out of it and we know there’s a solution, I’m like a typical guy. I just want to help fix things. It’s the needless suffering… the family, the kids, the community and so on.”

Harry added: “The simple fix is: Get tested, know your status. ”

Thomas, a former captain of the Welsh rugby team, was chatting to Harry to mark National HIV Testing Week.

HIV testing has slumped by 30 percent since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, something that Harry attributed to testing fatigue.

Thomas began the conversation by reminding Harry that it was 35 years since his mother, who famously sat with and held the hand of an AIDS patient in the 1980s, opened the first special hospital unit for people with HIV and AIDS in London.

Asked how things had changed since then, Harry said that: “This is a virus that very much was a death sentence, now it’s a manageable disease… I wasn’t around in those days when the commercials existed all over television trying to completely polarize everyone who had the virus or anyone who even talked about the virus from anyone else.

“What my mum did and so many other people did at that time was to smash that wall down, and kick the door open and say, ‘No, when people are suffering, then we need to learn more.’

“I’ve seen huge change. People are able and happy to talk about HIV so much more openly, but the stigma still exists and therefore the testing is still a problem.”

Thomas described his daily routine saying: “At 6 a.m., every single day, my alarm goes off. I take my HIV medication, which is one tablet, and I feel that my day then begins.”

He added: “The sooner you find out if you’re positive, then the sooner you can start treatment. If you leave it too late, then it can have circumstances that are irreplaceable, irreparable.”

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Tom SykesEuropean Editor at Large

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