Dr. Sheela Basrur

HEALTH

Dr. Sheela Basrur, a longtime resident of Scarborough who presided over the amalgamation of six regional public health units and served as the first medical officer of health for the city of Toronto, became the face of public health during the SARS outbreak of 2003. Dr. Basrur passed away on June 2 of this year after an 18 month battle with a rare and aggressive form of cancer. Dr. Basrur was appointed the Province’s Chief medical officer of health and Long-term Care and Assistant Deputy Minister of Health, in 2004. She was widely regarded as Ontario’s most respected and well-known public health official - a profile that former colleagues and friends say was earned in the trenches of post-amalgamation Toronto. In her position as Toronto’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, she had taken on key and often controversial, new public health initiatives: a ban on smoking in bars and restaurants, a ban on cosmetic pesticide use, and a rating system for restaurants. However, it was the SARS outbreak, first diagnosed at the Scarborough Grace Hospital that eventually killed 44 Torontonians that led to Dr. Basrur’s emergence as a pre-eminent voice of public health.