Today marks 25 years since Princess Diana’s iconic meeting with AIDS patients in Canada.

While AIDS related deaths are a relative rarity across the UK and north America nowadays, 25 years ago the prognosis for those with HIV was far graver. With highly visible symptoms and a campaign of hatred against them, AIDS patients were often left isolated, even from their closest loved ones. Thanks to the vicious, misinformed stigma surrounding the condition, many were treated as modern-day lepers.

But on this day (October 25) in 1991, the late Princess of Wales, Princess Diana, took it upon herself to use her huge influence to help show the world that, not only was HIV not contractible through touching, but that those living with the condition deserved the same level of empathy and compassion we’d afford to any other sick person. She was photographed shaking hands with on of the residents of Casey House, an AIDS hospice in Canada. And in a move that shook a then less enlightened world, she chose to not wear gloves.

The princess was quoted as saying at the time: “HIV does not make people dangerous to know. You can shake their hands and give them a hug. Heaven knows they need it.”

While her HIV activism began before and continued beyond that moment, the historic photo taken at Casey House will go down in history as one of the key moments that helped change the world’s view of those living with HIV and AIDS.

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