On the ground floor of the Edison Health Center, a large, dingy-looking building from 13e arrondissement of Paris, a small blue briefcase keeps going back and forth between the refrigerator room and the seven medical offices. Inside the precious portable cooler this Tuesday, August 23, twenty doses of the monkeypox vaccine. This infectious disease, also called “Monkeypox virus”, which has been spreading in France since May, most often during intimate relationships, has already infected nearly 3,500 people.
Mostly men with several male sexual partners, indicates the High Authority for Health. Estimated at 250,000 by Public Health France, they are priority for vaccination. Just like trans people with multiple sexual partners and all sex workers. To date, of the 103,372 doses of vaccine delivered, 59,384 have been injected, including a few hundred to sex workers.
Not enough according to the Parisian municipality which, supported by seven community associations, has decided to speed up the pace at the Edison center, which opened on July 26. Out of 57 daily slots, 35 are reserved for them on Tuesday and Friday afternoons. “Still too little”, believes Sabine Mercier, one of the seven doctors employed by the City for the occasion. This practitioner specializing in the question of transidentity regrets that the initiative is still unique in France. “The associative link is crucial, she insists. It allows us to reach a public often remote from the medical community, sometimes without papers and not always speaking French. »
Insufficient figures
Especially since most hospitals, five pharmacies and the 150 health centers that can vaccinate in France against monkeypox are booked online. At the Edison Center, it is the associations that take care of the registration of sex workers. The administrative staff then takes care of creating a Doctolib account for them and booking them a second appointment for the second dose. “This morning I received a Chinese masseuse, says Doctor Mercier. Without the intermediary of the Lotus Bus, a Doctors of the World program, she would never have known how to register on Doctolib on her own. »
“Every week, we ask for the acceleration of the pace, the mobilization of pharmacies and certain general practitioners, and we are told that the maximum has already been done. » Marc-Antoine Bartoli, Act Up-Paris
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