Sheela Basrur
|
Sheela Basrur OOnt |
|
|---|---|
| Born |
October 17, 1956 Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Died | June 2, 2008 (aged 51) Kitchener, Ontario, Canada |
| Citizenship | Canadian |
| Fields | Community health, epidemiology |
| Institutions | Government of Ontario, City of Toronto |
| Alma mater | University of Western Ontario, University of Toronto |
| Known for | Toronto Medical Officer of Health |
Sheela Basrur, OOnt (October 17, 1956 – June 2, 2008) was a Canadian physician and Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health and Assistant Deputy Minister of Public Health. She resigned from these positions late in 2006 to undergo treatment for cancer.
Basrur was born in Toronto, Ontario, in 1956 to Indian immigrants. Her mother, Parvathi Basrur, was a professor of veterinary genetics and her father, Vasanth Basrur, was a radiation oncologist. She grew up in Guelph, where there were very few visible minorities at the time. After obtaining a Bachelor of Science from the University of Western Ontario in 1979, she received her doctor of medicine from the University of Toronto in 1982, after which Basrur worked as a general practitioner in Guelph for one year. She then spent a year in India and Nepal, where she became interested in public health. Upon returning to Canada, she obtained a Master of Health Science degree in 1987, specializing in community health and epidemiology, again from the University of Toronto. She then completed a post-graduate residency, becoming a specialist in community medicine, as well as an assistant professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Toronto.
Basrur lived in Scarborough, but moved to Kitchener, where she underwent treatment for hemangiopericytoma, from which she eventually died on June 2, 2008.
Basrur became the Medical Officer of Health for the East York Health Unit until East York was merged into the city of Toronto in 1998, when she became the first Medical Officer of Health for the new amalgamated city. She was widely hailed for her work during the 2003 Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak in Toronto, appearing in numerous television interviews on international networks, such as CNN. Her other accomplishments included Canada's first city program that required restaurants to post health inspection results in their windows, post-9/11 bioterrorism preparation plans, and a city-wide ban on cigarette smoking in 2004.
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