A doctor was honored on Saturday for being a front line hero of the COVID-19 pandemic and an advocate in the LGBTQ community. 

Dr. Gary Blick is the founder of Health Care Advocates International in Stratford, which provides medical care to the LBGTQ community.

Dr. Blick says he's proud to have spent decades fighting the stigma against people with HIV/AIDS.

He says his top priority now is to "build awareness about the need for science, not politics, to influence the process of developing a COVID-19 vaccine."

"All of these vaccine trials that are in phase three right now have excluded HIV positive patients from enrollment, so we will have no safety information on these vaccines if and when they come to fruition to know whether they're safe in people with HIV," says Dr. Blick.

Blick is also the founder of an HIV clinic in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe.