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A pop-up clinic offering monkeypox vaccination has been arranged to take place at a Windsor Pride event this weekend.
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The clinic — provided by the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit in partnership with Windsor-Essex Pride Fest — will be open during Pride Day festivities at Lanspeary Park (Llanglois Avenue at Ottawa Street) on Sunday from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m. “I think it’s good. We are active,” said David Lenz, director of community development at the Windsor-Essex Pride Fest. “There are those who have expressed their concerns (about monkeypox). They want to do the vaccine.” Dr. Shanker Nesathurai, the district’s acting medical examiner, said the vaccine clinic is intended as a “pre-exposure prophylaxis” measure against monkeypox and will be the first of its kind in Windsor-Essex. Asked why a Pride event was chosen for the region’s first smallpox vaccine distribution, Nesathurai was candid: “Monkeypox is a major challenge and it disproportionately affects members of our community where men have sex with men,” he said. “We want to distribute the vaccine in the most efficient way to minimize the chance of illness among our community members,” said Nesathurai.
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“We always want to deliver public health services in a way that reaches the target community.” Felicia Lawal, director of health protection at the local health unit, noted that the supply of smallpox vaccine across the province is limited. The clinic in Lanspeary Park will be able to administer around 100 doses. “We have a vaccine, but it is a limited amount,” Lawal said. “It will be done on a first-come, first-served basis.” Asked if a monkeypox vaccine clinic at a Pride event could fuel a negative perception of the LGBTQ+ community and perpetuate misconceptions about monkeypox, Nesathurai said the health facility always tries to provide services in a “non- judgment and stigma. “But we also recognize … that certain populations of people are at higher risk for certain diseases at certain times.”
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“In the context of monkeypox in Ontario, men who have sex with men are at the highest risk of contracting monkeypox right now.” As of Thursday, there were 449 confirmed cases of smallpox in Ontario — 347 of them in the Toronto area. Of those Ontario cases, 447 of them — 99.6 percent — are men. Nesathurai acknowledged that there are other places in the world where monkeypox has had more widespread transmission. “But we have to contextualize or make judgments based on what we know today. It’s no different than anything else in medicine.” David Lenz, director of community development with the Windsor-Essex Pride Fest, is seen at the Windsor Pride office on August 5, 2022. Photo by Dax Melmer /Windsor Star Lenz said Windsor Pride has been working closely with the health unit for months and organizers are pleased to have secured the availability of the monkeypox vaccine for the festival. “Not only that, but it’s an opportunity to distribute accurate information about the disease,” Lenz said. The health unit announced on July 20 that Windsor-Essex had its first confirmed case of monkeypox. [email protected]
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