The Duke of Sussex is following in his mother’s footsteps as he urges communities to talk about AIDS. Prince Harry is in Amsterdam for the 2018 AIDS summit. He joined advocates from his charity Sentebale to discuss the issues faced by teenagers who have HIV or AIDS for a Facebook live conversation.
Prince Harry said: “It is about being able to normalise the conversation around HIV because it is a virus you can live with now, which is different to many many years ago.
“In order to normalise it those communities who have never had an HIV problem, need to start talking about it.”
“We have to put the power into the hands of the younger generations because that’s where the solutions are going to come from, and that’s where engagement is coming from.
“There is a generational gap in pretty much every problem that we have at the moment. The younger generation not only have the solutions but have the capability to be able to solve these problems in a much shorter period. It can’t just be young people’s advice; it has to part of policy change. Why wouldn’t you want people like this on your side feeding you the right information so you can get it right the first time? You guys are the people that I would want on my team to be able to explain to me what the root problem is on the ground. And it’s different in every country.”
Prince Harry has been a committed HIV/AIDS campaigner, and he even publicly tested for the virus a number of times. The cause was close to his mother’s heart. Diana, Princess of Wales, opened the UK’s first purpose-built HIV/AIDS unit at London Middlesex Hospital in April 1987, where she famously shook hands with a man suffering from HIV or AIDS. Prince Harry’s charity Sentebale focuses on supporting young people with HIV in Lesotho and Botswana.
Watch the full Facebook conversation above.