In 1987, Princess Diana of Wales visited AIDS patients at a hospital in London.

A famous photograph shows her shaking a patient's hand without wearing gloves.

The gesture challenged the once-common (but incorrect) belief that HIV or AIDS could be transmitted by touch.

The moment is emblematic of Diana's unwavering compassion for other people.



This week marks 21 years since the death of Princess Diana — a woman who's remembered as a style icon, loving mother, unconventional royal, and champion of charitable causes.

One of her finest humanitarian moments took place in a single instant on April 19, 1987.

That day, Diana arrived at London Middlesex Hospital to open the UK's first unit dedicated to treating people with HIV and AIDS, the BBC reported.

Then, she did something that history would remember forever: She shook the hand of an AIDS patient without wearing gloves.

Today it may not seem remarkable, since we know that HIV — the virus that can lead to AIDS — can't be transmitted by handshakes. But things were very different just a few decades ago.

Princess Diana speaks with an AIDS patient in 1991. Hans Deryk/AP

AIDS was first identified back in the early 1980s. By 1983, scientists at the CDC had already concluded that the disease could not be transmitted through casual contact, but the public had become terrified. Reports from that era tell heartbreaking stories of AIDS patients — even children — who were shunned and stigmatized because of the disease. In 1985, the Los Angeles Times conducted a poll and found that 50% of respondents favored quarantining people with AIDS.

When she shook the hand of an unidentified AIDS patient, Diana used her public platform to challenge that irrational fear.

Princess Diana hugs an HIV-positive child in 1991. Dave Caulkin/AP

"If a royal was allowed to go in shake a patient's hands, somebody at the bus stop or the supermarket could do the same," a nurse who witnessed Diana's hospital visit once told the BBC. "That really educated people."

Diana didn't get the nickname "the people's princess" by accident: In her life she was a president or patron of more than 100 different charities working across a range of important issues. Her humanitarian work didn't begin or end with that handshake.

But in that moment, Diana showed the depth of her compassion for others. And she did it in a way that speeches and PSAs and TV interviews never could: She led by example.