DIANA, PRINCESS OF WALES

DIANA

PRINCESS OF WALES, AIDS ACTIVIST

Princess Diana's devotion to AIDS relief has helped to reduce the stigma of the disease in England and has made her popular and widely admired, especially by young people.

Born the Honourable Diana Frances Spencer, July 1, 1961, Princess Di has an illustrious pedigree. (Her father became the 8th Earl Spencer.) The world watched on TV when at age 20 on July 29, 1981, she married Charles, Prince of Wales and heir to the British throne. It seemed a fairy tale come true. Diana produced two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, but she found her husband uncaring, uninteresting, and unfaithful. She was not living happily ever after, and in 1992, after years of rumor and speculation, it was announced that Diana and Charles would separate.

By this time Princess Diana had become the most beloved member of the royal family. Sincerely compassionate, she had worked with drug addicts and abused children, and she took on the cause of AIDS in the mid-1980s because she saw suffering people for whom little was being done. When she opened a new AIDS ward in London's Middlesex Hospital, in 1987, the papers emphasized that she did not wear protective clothing, but mingled with patients and shook their hands, showing that the disease is not easily transmitted. She is a patron of the National AIDS Trust, and her presence at fund-raising events stimulates donations. Her affectionate care of her friend Adrian Ward-Jackson as he was dying of AIDS in 1991 was widely covered. In the AIDS ward of Middlesex Hospital in 1987, she said to a patient, "Anywhere I see suffering, that is where I want to be, doing what I can."

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