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



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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.



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On December 3, 2018, a day after the Global Citizen Festival
where Gurira made an appearance as a co-host 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.



&nbsp;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.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“The composition is complex, we want to protect from many different types of HIV because there are so many traits everywhere,” Pau says.</blockquote>



“Right,” Gurira nods attentively.



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



The group of women join in the conversation.



They may just be on a breakthrough to finding an HIV
vaccine.



The study is being conducted by the HIV Vaccine Trials
Network, Janssen Vaccines &amp; Prevention B.V., part of the Janssen
Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson &amp; Johnson, and all the participating
study clinics. 



These partners are working in collaboration with community
stakeholders to ensure this research is acceptable to the local community and
respectful of local cultures.



With 27 sites on the continent alone, they have clinics in
countries including Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique. 



Gurira has recently collaborated with them to help further
their research and spread awareness about the disease.



Gurira was born in the United States (US) and later moved to
Zimbabwe, when she was a young girl.



Growing up in Harare, she saw and heard a number of stories
relating to HIV that touched her deeply. 



The 1980s were a time when the disease had started spreading
globally.



“I can’t really extricate my upbringing from understanding
how this epidemic hit southern Africa and how it changed the tapestry of life,”
she says.



The stigma around the disease and how women were treated
were some of the issues that concerned her.



“Growing up, I witnessed how it was affecting, not only
cultural dynamics, but also exacerbating issues around gender dynamics and
various things that filled me with great passion,” she says.



“How women were dealing with a great amount of stigma in the
family; if HIV was in the homestead, the involvement of even in-laws and how
that was being interpreted –&nbsp; about faulting
a woman. [As well as] blame imposed upon women and the loss of a spouse and how
that would affect how a woman was treated post that time. So there were a lot
of things affecting me as I grew up and as I watched these things happen.”



&nbsp;It was those personal
experiences that shaped how she viewed HIV and the importance of eradicating
it.



It was later that she moved back to the US and pursued a
career in psychology and then a masters in Fine Arts.



How people perceived HIV there, was not what she expected.



“Coming to the US and seeing how the African was viewed as a statistic; I was seeing real people with real stories and experiences who were truly people who had aspirations and careers and had many things going for them that they were working towards.”



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At the time, antiretroviral (ARV) therapy had not yet been
introduced and there was no way to manage it.



“It was such a death sentence at the time,” she says.



“And to come to the US to find that what we were dealing
with in southern Africa was statistical, that also gave a great amount of need
to bridge that very unfortunate disconnect between the actual human experience
of it and the value of people who were being affected by this… and how they
were being viewed.”



While there, she connected with some of her friends who did
field work around the issue while she was more focused on her advocacy in the
field of arts.



She married her advocacy for HIV with her passion for the
arts.



Gurira began writing plays in an effort to use her strengths
as an actor, and tell stories about issues she felt strongly about.



She co-wrote and co-starred in In the Continuum, a play
about HIV/AIDS from the perspective of a married Zimbabwean woman.



With this play, her aim was to break away from the
“statistical component of how the African is viewed often”.



In December 2011, In the Continuum commemorated World AIDS
Day. 



Little did she know that was the beginning of her activism
against HIV/AIDS.



The ‘golden age’ of HIV science



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="411" height="603" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Danai4.png" alt="" class="wp-image-39618" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Danai4.png 411w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Danai4-300x440.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Danai4-204x300.png 204w" sizes="(max-width: 411px) 100vw, 411px" /><figcaption> Glenda Gray, a National Research Foundation A-rated scientist, CEO and President of the South African Medical Research Council. Picture: Motlabana Monnakgotla</figcaption></figure></div>



The same year, a woman in South Africa by the name of Dr
Glenda Gray, was elected into the US Institute of Medicine, National Academies,
as a foreign associate for her research on preventing HIV-infected mothers from
passing the virus to their newborns.



She is a National Research Foundation A-rated scientist, CEO
and President of the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC).



She is a qualified paediatrician and clinician and
co-founder of the internationally recognized Perinatal HIV Research Unit in
Soweto, South Africa.







In December 2018 on the same day of the interview, Gray and
Gurira meet at the Imbokodo clinic.



Gray is one of the leaders of the trials at the clinic. 



“We are in a golden age in terms of HIV science and hopeful about making huge advancements in HIV vaccine developments,” she says.



Much like Gurira, Gray was also confronted with the epidemic
at a young age. 



“As a young doctor, I saw HIV explode in my face and imagine
if we can, in my medical career, go from the beginning of an epidemic to the
end of an epidemic; that would be an amazing feat to be part of the team that
finds an HIV vaccine.” 



What Gray has endeavored to do is to find an HIV vaccine
that protects women and in the future, children and adolescents as well.



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“We definitely are not going to be able to treat ourselves
out of this epidemic if we don’t find potent biomedical interventions, we are
not going to be able to turn off the tap,” she says.



Gray has dealt with innumerable women affected by HIV.



“I am sick and tired of HIV and I am sick and tired of how
it devastates lives and I am sick and tired of how it impacts women in Africa,”
Glenda says.



Gray, together with Dr Paul Stoffels, who is the head of
research and development for Johnson &amp; Johnson, have been trying to prove
HIV vaccines work.



Stoffels and his team have been working with HIV for more
than 25 years, developing ARV medication.



The medication has evolved from many pills a day to one a
day, he says.



“We are working on new medicines to bring it to an injectable to once every day to once every month. But we can treat HIV patients but they need to be treated for the rest of their lives,” he says.



“People can have normal life expectancy and live normal
lives with medicine but we won’t be able to stop the epidemic if we don’t get
to a vaccine.”



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="418" height="536" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Danai3.png" alt="" class="wp-image-39619" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Danai3.png 418w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Danai3-300x385.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Danai3-234x300.png 234w" sizes="(max-width: 418px) 100vw, 418px" /><figcaption> Dr Paul Stoffels, who is the head of research and development for Johnson &amp; Johnson. Picture: Motlabana Monnakgotla</figcaption></figure></div>



He says that the vaccine they have been working on has been
very active in animal models and they have now shifted to clinical trials in
humans to prove that it works.



“We are at a stage that we do the first efficacy study and
at the same time first we prove that it is safe and that it can be used by
people and then we prove that it is efficacious,” he says.



The people who become part of the vaccine study will be part
of the trial for years.



However, one of the challenges, he says they face is finding
people who are at risk to commit to being part of the long-term study.



Therefore, it is important to bring awareness to the public
about such studies being done.



“HIV prevention needs important people such as global stars
to step in and with Global Citizen, we had a perfect platform to be on the
global stage. And Danai is one of the people well known in Africa and she is
very committed to this objective and so we started collaborating with her to
bring the message of prevention, and also the message of importance of research
in getting to the HIV vaccines, in getting people to participate as well as to
stay on,” he says.



Other celebrities also known for the advocacy of HIV include
musician and actor Lady Gaga, musician Bono, television host Ellen DeGeneres
and musician Alicia Keys.



“What’s very important, I think, for a person like her
[Gurira] is to give the message of hope that one day we will be able to combat
the disease but at the same time, it is a message of ‘at this moment we need to
prevent’,” says Stoffels.



Gray agrees.



“She [Gurira] understands what it’s like to be a young
woman, she understands what it’s like to be a black young woman and how
difficult it is to navigate safe sex, masculinity, patriarchy and so she comes
with a lot of soul and insight.”



Eliminating the epidemic



After the release of In the Continuum, Gurira toured her play in South Africa and Zimbabwe.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“I met some courageous people on the ground at the front line of this epidemic.”</blockquote>



Through that, she was able to connect to a number of
organizations which she then got involved in.



“It not only allowed me to learn more but become more of a
vessel for advocacy and awareness,” Gurira says.



“It is really powerful to me that these women are here [at
the clinic] helming this study that could really eliminate this epidemic.



“There have been epidemics that have existed in past human
history that have been eliminated through vaccination and we could actually see
that come to pass. I am sitting on a site where this could come to pass for
HIV/AIDS, which is the epidemic of our time,” she says, hopeful.



“I’d like to see it eliminated.



“There are times when we tend to think that ‘oh HIV it is
being managed, and ARVs exist,’ and we forget that it is still a very active
fight.”



According to AVERT, an international HIV and AIDS charity,
in 2017, there were roughly 1.8 million new HIV infections, the same as in 2016
–&nbsp; about 5,000 new infections per day.



Therefore, Gurira says awareness is very important to avoid
the “issue fading in the background”.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="928" height="616" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Danai5.png" alt="" class="wp-image-39620" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Danai5.png 928w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Danai5-300x199.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Danai5-600x398.png 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Danai5-768x510.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 928px) 100vw, 928px" /><figcaption>From left to right, Dr Paul Stoffels, Danai Gurira and Dr Glenda Gray. Picture: Supplied by Global Citizen</figcaption></figure>



Having been born in the US and being Zimbabwean, her fight
for HIV has become global.



&nbsp;Since her appointment
by the UN, she aims for a larger reach.



Gurira says despite women being the focus of her advocacy,
everyone, including men and boys, need to be a part of this fight.



“As Canadian Prime Minister [Justin] Trudeau recently said,
which I really appreciated, he called himself a feminist. He said, ‘I am a
feminist and to be feminist you believe in the equality of men and women and
you believe there is a lot of work to do to get to that place’.”



The fight against HIV continues to be a global phenomenon, but with more awareness raised and efforts from everyone, we could be one vaccine away from eliminating it.

Tag: United Nations Goodwill Ambassador

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Danai Gurira: The Celluloid Warrior Fighting Against HIV