Prince Harry is tackling the stigma surrounding HIV by quietly visiting a hospital – a move his late mother, Princess Diana, did decades earlier.
Harry, who turns 32 on Thursday, visited Mildmay Mission Hospital in east London last Friday, a few days after he had returned from southern Africa, where he was on the front lines of elephant conservation work.
In 1989, Diana memorably shook hands with an AIDS patient at Mildmay and kissed him on the cheek – a gesture that went a long way to highlighting the fight against the illness.
“He had a chance to speak to staff there for a bit longer,” a spokesman for the prince tells PEOPLE. “He met with patients and spent some time learning a bit more about the work there.
“He is continuing to learn more about HIV as a virus, and he was able to talk to them about his work on testing, which he is very interested in.”
In July, Harry publicly took an HIV test to encourage others to do the same.