Canada’s oldest by and for sex worker support organization is hosting a community health clinic in the city tomorrow.
Maggie’s Toronto Sex Worker’s Action Project (SWAP) along with Call Auntie Clinic and Auduzhe Mino Newesinong are joining forces to host a Sexually Transmitted and Blood Borne Infections (STBBI) and HIV community health clinic from 2-5 p.m. at 19 Trinity Square.
As a safe, confidential and judgement free space, the clinic will anonymously provide Torontonians with COVID vaccines, flu and monkeypox vaccines, gonorrhoea, chlamydia and may provide additional sexual health vaccines upon request.
The clinic also includes blood, urine and throat swab testing, HIV point of care testing and HIV self-testing kits to take home.
The Maggie staff is also on hand with harm reduction and safe sex supplies as well as midwives and clinicians to answer any sexual and health questions.
Guests visiting the clinic are not required to provide an OHIP card, ID or legal name to receive vaccinations or testing.
Maggie’s Toronto was founded in 1986 and established on the belief that sex work is real, legitimate and valuable work. The organization is run by, for and controlled by sex workers.
“They are not an exit organization” and “ believe that whether sex workers choose to stay or leave their industries” that they “deserve[s] to live with safety, dignity and respect,” according to Maggie’s website.
Jenna Hynes, Peer in Health Case Management, Parenting & Drop-In Program manager of Maggie’s SWAP Toronto,believes free clinics and safe spaces are essential to the livelihood of sex workers.
“Sex workers are often overlooked, left behind, or even actively harmed by health care systems and professionals – all because of stigma and discrimination about our jobs. The no-barrier clinics we run are so important because we give sex workers a safe space to be able to disclose what they do for a living in order to be able to receive proper health care without proper judgement,” they told Now Toronto in an email statement on Wednesday.
“A huge part of what we do at Maggie’s is provide harm reduction in sex work – and part of that tenet is allowing honesty & disclosure between sex workers and their clinicians, a measure that truly can mean the difference between life and death,” they continued.
