Mildmay Mission, the AIDS hospice in London's East End where Princess Diana demonstrated with a simple handshake and a hugs in the early days of the AIDS crisis that there was nothing to be feared from people living with with AIDS, is to be torn down, Pink Paper reports:
"The hospital, on Hackney Rd in Shoreditch, will be demolished to make way for a new development including a 24-bed new Mildmay Hospital, which will continue to meet the needs of people living with HIV…The venue was made famous following a visit by the Princess of Wales in 1989. In front of national television cameras during one of several visits, she was presented with a bunch of flowers by a 34-year-old AIDS patient named Simon. Within 30 minutes of the story airing on the evening news, Simon's family – from which he had long been estranged – contacted him. They stayed with him until he died at Mildmay just ten days later."
A video of one of Diana's visits to the hospice, which will remind you of Diana's amazing work to remove the stigma of AIDS and her work for gay people in that time when most who had it didn't survive, AFTER THE JUMP…
