The Celluloid Warrior Fighting Against HIV

HIV/AIDS remains a global concern. International star and Zimbabwean playwright Danai Gurira is using her celebrity to battle for its elimination.

- Karen Mwendera

A SUPERHERO ON THE big screen and now a possible superhero in real life, actor and playwright, Danai Gurira, is making it her mission to join the fight against HIV/AIDS.

She is known for playing General Okoye in one of last year’s biggest films, Black Panther, which grossed over a billion dollars worldwide.

The famous Zimbabwean says the fight against the epidemic has been evident in her life ever since she was a little girl.

Recently appointed a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador, she chats to FORBES AFRICA about her work.

On December 3, 2018, a day after the Global Citizen Festival where Gurira made an appearance as a cohost to rapturous applause from an audience of 75,000 in Johannesburg, we meet her at an HIV clinic on the outskirts of the city in a township called Tembisa. It’s a trial clinic called Imbokodo for testing a combination of two experimental vaccines to prevent HIV.

At the clinic, Gurira meets with a group of women heading it, to discuss and learn how the trials work.

One of the women, dressed in a pink blouse, responsible for creating the trial vaccine, talks to Gurira about their work. Maria Grazia Pau is the Senior Director, Compound Development Team Leader, for the HIV vaccine programs at Janssen.

Pau has over 18 years of experience in the field of viral vectors. “We have seen responses in the body

systemically when we check the blood but also we have checked other studies, and we do see responses there,” she tells Gurira.

Everyone in the room pays attention. “The composition is complex, we want to protect from many different types of HIV because there are so many traits everywhere,” Pau says.

“Right,” Gurira nods attentively. “It is the answer to elimination,” Gurira says.