MLHU holds Monkey Pox vaccination clinic at Pride London Festival

When a Monkey Pox vaccination clinic opened at Victoria Park Saturday, the line quickly grew to nearly 50 people.

The Middlesex-London Health Unit (MLHU) has set up a tent during Pride London Festival for three days to provide easy access to those eligible for the vaccine.

"It was very important for MLHU to be a Pride festival offering the vaccination because we have had nine confirmed cases of monkey pox in the Middlesex London region," says Mary Lou Albanese, the director of infectious diseases at MLHU.

"According to the Ontario Ministry of Health (MOH) guidelines, the rest of the community is very low risk, but for those individuals who feel they're at risk, we wanted to give them this opportunity."

According to the MOH, those at risk are Trans or CIS gender individuals 18 years of age or older who self identify as being gay or bisexual and other men who have sex with men.

"I’m here to get the Monkey Pox Vaccine," says Frederick Hood, who lined up with his partner to get vaccinated.

Eric Knight (L) and Frederick Hood line up for Monkey Pox Vaccine on Saturday July 23, 2022 (Brent Lale/CTV News London)"It's excellent to see this many people in line. It is really important that we protect our community and there's a lot of statistics around same sex couples, and the monkey pox virus. We need to protect ourselves from new variants and new strains of different viruses."

Eric Knight was in line for the same reasons.

"Fredreick and I are together," says Knight. "We don't go out too much, but I want to definitely protect myself because you never know. We've already got the last needle from COVID so why not get it for the Monkey Pox."

A line of over 50 people grows outside of the Monkey Pox vaccination clinic set up during Pride London Festival (Brent Lale/CTV News London)The MLHU says there has been great response from their clinics which began in June.

"So far we've given approximately 328 administered doses," says Albanese.

"The response has been very positive, and being at the Pride Festival this weekend, was very important to help support the Pride Festival and to offer this to those individuals."