The 'amazing' hospital that is the inspiration behind the name for new London Overground line

A small East London hospital is being immortalised in the name change of a London Overground line, but what makes this hospice so special? Nestled in Shoreditch, Mildmay Mission Hospital was the first hospice in Europe that cared for patients with HIV/AIDS with frequent visits from Diana, Princess of Wales.

This is where Diana famously shook the hand of AIDS patient, Martin Johnson, humanising patients and the virus for the first time on a global stage. Jason Reid, 43, was a patient at Mildmay in 2005, admitted to the brain injuries unit with AIDS dementia, unable to speak, walk or talk properly.

He believes the new line will educate passengers on the hospital’s history and the wider impact the HIV/AIDS epidemic had on the LGBTQ+ community. Jason said: “It’s a bridge to the generations who will inevitably forget about HIV and AIDS.”

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Stepping into hospital at 25 with what he believed was a cold, Jason quickly learned he had developed AIDS and was suffering with pneumonia, meningitis, malnutrition and dementia. Jason said: “Mildmay was the path to starting my new life and it was always a place that I was told 'people only leave here in a box'. There was that thought around Mildmay and hospices, that people don’t come out of them.”

Jason added: “I was there at a time when medication was getting good so I was lucky.” HIV was first detected in the UK in 1981, attacking people's immune systems leaving them vulnerable to a host of illnesses with the possibility of spreading to the brain.

Many who died from the virus were young gay men who were often estranged from their families due to the stigma of their sexuality. Jason said: “I think it’s important to keep the memory of AIDS alive and the impact it had particularly, on the LGBTQ+ community and not just the people who died but who were often disowned from family and friends and left to die on their own.”

Mildmay has been praised for its holistic care with staff working together to support the patient as much as possible. Jason said: “This particular place will always have a place in my heart because of how they humanised the people that were there. They treated us so well.”

Ann Riley, 67, worked as a clinical assistant at Mildmay in the 1990s and helped set up the brain injuries unit that, a decade later, saved Jason’s life. Ann said: “[It was] very emotional work. Very difficult work. You'd have been on call over a weekend and on a Monday morning you'd be telling the wider team of 10 deaths.”

With the need for specialised care, many patients gave up their homes to stay at the hospital, with others having no choice after being estranged from their families. Ann said: “We became their home.”

Focusing on holistic care, Mildmay provided counsellors, chaplains, occupational therapists, physios, nurses, social workers and doctors who all worked together to support the whole patient, providing whatever help they could. This included facilitating family reunions.

Ann remembers encouraging patients to ring their parents and explain their status, inviting them to visit the hospital. Ann said: “It's actually what sticks with you, of all the amazing things you do in medicine.

"The moment you enable that to happen, you talk with the person and give them the confidence to pick up the phone to make that call, or you made it for them, and then you enable something really important.”

Although there is still no cure, HIV is now a treatable condition with medication reducing the viral load in the body allowing people to live their life as normal. As a result, Mildmay has diversified its services and now specialises in care for patients experiencing homelessness - one of the few in London.

Teri Milewska, 42, a Registered and Compliance Manager at Mildmay said: “Because we are small and specialist, people know about us if they work in the field of HIV or if they have had a family member here. Apart from that it is very niche. [The Mildmay line], in terms of publicity, it's amazing and really know who we are and what we do.”

TfL changes to London Overground map

Mildmay Mission Hospital is a charitable hospital funded by the NHS that provides rehabilitative health and social care. The Mildmay line is one of 6 names given to Overground lines by Transport for London (TFL), running from Stratford to Clapham Junction /Richmond.

Transport for London (TfL) has announced that the London Overground is being split into six different lines, each with a different name and colour. The names were decided with the help of research group DNCO to provide 'invaluable insight' into London’s diverse histories and untold stories.

TfL says the names will tell some of the important stories of the capital's 'rich cultural diversity'. These will be called the Liberty, Lioness, Mildmay, Suffragette, Weaver and Windrush lines.

The Overground is currently shown as one orange line on the map but will now be signalled by different colours. The Mildmay line will be blue parallel lines on the map running through Dalston.

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