Princess Diana’s act of kindness, open-hearted and selfless gesture of compassion towards victims of HIV  change the world and helped reduce the vast belief that AIDS could be transferred by human touch.

Prince Harry on Thursday said he felt compelled to try to finish the work of his late mother, Princess Diana, in tackling HIV and the stigma around it, as he urged people to get tested for the disease.

The 37-year-old royal urged that getting tested for the viral infection that causes AIDS will play a vital role in the UK’s goal to end HIV cases by 2030.

He said: “Every single one of us has a duty, or at least an opportunity, to get tested ourselves or to make it easier for everybody else to get tested. And then it just becomes a regular thing like anything else.

“This testing week, especially in the UK, or wherever you are in the world, go and get a test. Let people know that you know your status. Do it!”

Harry underwent a test for HIV in 2016, which sparked a 500per cent increase in requests for tests from one charity, he said. But he said HIV testing had gone down about 30per cent during the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the time Diana famously shook hands with AIDS patients at a London hospital in 1987, an action that prevailed seen as a milestone in the battle against the stigma surrounding people with the virus, and Harry has also become a prominent HIV and AIDS campaigner.

“My mum’s work was unfinished,” he told former Wales rugby union captain Gareth Thomas, who announced in 2019 he was HIV positive, in a video to mark National HIV Testing Week.

“I feel obligated to try and continue that as much as possible. I could never, you know, fill her shoes especially in this particular space … because of what she did and what she stood for and how vocal she was about this issue.”

The World Health Organization estimates that about 38 million people were living with HIV at the end of 2020 and that AIDS-related illnesses had claimed more than 36 million lives since it began in the 1980s.

Leading HIV/AIDS charities are hoping that wider testing could lead to an end to new HIV cases in England.

Diana died in a car crash in Paris, France died in 1997 at the age of 36- ​began her work with AIDS patients in the 1980s.

She was brave and made physical contact with victims of HIV to de-stigmatize the condition.

She once said: “HIV does not make people dangerous to know. You can shake their hands and hug them. Heaven knows they need it. What’s more, you can share their homes, their workplaces, and their playgrounds and toys.”

Her legacy lives on!