Courtesy Dr. Demetre Daskalakis

When meningitis claimed the lives of seven gay men in New York City, a soldier in the battle against the disease took to the Big Apple’s sex clubs.

Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, a young gay doctor specializing in infectious diseases, was armed with syringes full of a life-saving vaccine and is credited with vaccinating thousands of men against the outbreak.

“In my life I don’t wear a white coat. I look like any 39-year-old gay man who walks around New York. When I went out to do vaccines I just looked like myself,” he said. “I wanted to be a part of controlling the outbreak… it was a very oddly familiar scenario of young men dying and people didn’t understand what was really going on, although in this case we did know what was going on and we knew how to prevent it.”