Hawa Chelangat is a 37-year old prostitute who supports her five children through commercial sex. She met Frank Plummer, a microbiologist from the University of Manitoba, in a grim shantytown outside Nairobi, Kenya.
Since 1983 the center of Plummer's research has taken place at a clinic for female sex workers there. In 1993, he discovered that a small percentage of the women, like Hawa, did not become infected with HIV. By studying this small group of immune women, Plummer thought, one might help to develop a vaccine for HIV.
SEARCHING FOR HAWA'S SECRET tells the remarkable story of the scientific quest to find a AIDS vaccine rather than a cure: a difficult endeavor when vaccine research gets only 1% of AIDS research funding globally. Despite funding inequities the work in Nairobi has shifted the paradigm of AIDS research, and has scientists across the globe seeking and finding similar groups with the natural immunity. It is also the human story of an unlikely partnership between a Canadian doctor and a Kenyan prostitute.


Directed by Larry Krotz
Produced by The National Film Board of Canada



"Recommended... The human drama of poverty, disease and prostitution are dealt with frankly and without sensationalism so that viewers get a realistic sense of life in contemporary Nairobi."-AIDS Book Review Journal

"An excellent production... Highly recommended not only for studies in
AIDS/HIV, Medicine, African Studies, and Sociology but also for any individual concerned with the plight of AIDS victims and hope for a cure. " -Educational Media Reviews Online

✮2001 National Women's Studies Association Conference Film Festival,

✮2001 & 2000 African Studies Association Conference Film Festival

✮2000 AmFar Na