I never met “the SARS lady,” but she met me through my fears.
Early in 2003, when a stroke debilitated my father, he was admitted to Scarborough Grace Hospital in east-end Toronto. Within days of his admission there, the first cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome popped up around him. His was the SARS ward. The resulting quarantine made it impossible for us to enter the hospital or see Dad. My family panicked. How could we be sure his aphasia would be adequately treated? We found some solace in the demeanour and words of then Medical Officer of Health for Toronto, Dr. Sheela Basrur. Responsibility for the city’s health recovery fell to her and nursing staffs across the Greater Toronto Area.
“If you’re sick, you should seek treatment,” she told a terrified GTA. “If you’re healthy you should live your life.”
I’ll admit it. At first I was not consoled. About the same time that Dr. Basrur began appearing on nightly newscasts, so did the municipal and provincial politicians, riding on her coattails. They, particularly then Ontario Health Minister Tony Clement, did very little to calm our fears for my father’s well-being. Indeed, at the height of the SARS panic, provincial ministry officials decided to move my father and others to an unopened hospital facility in Brampton. Now on the far side of the GTA and quarantined yet again, it seemed my father was totally isolated, in a holding pattern and cut off from his family.
“He will remain in quarantine,” Mr. Clement’s office informed us, “but you can communicate with him by fax, if you wish.”
Needless to say, the Ministry did little to placate the Barris family. With his apparent aphasia, my father would barely be able to communicate his hunger or need to relieve himself, much less chat by fax about his prognosis. But I did find solace in the daily media appearances of Dr. Basrur. When we needed a dose of comfort most, she gave it to us.
You see, in that SARS crisis of 2003, not only did Dr. Basrur demonstrate the diligence of a beleaguered Toronto nursing corps, she also illustrated the efficacy of a publicly-focused health system. During the darkest moments of the SARS outbreak, when not even politicians could stem the fear factor with their rhetoric, there was this tiny, 46-year-old health specialist telling the city and the world, this horror would be beaten with appropriate medication, patience and community-based resolve. Funds were not the issue. Dr. Basrur proved that clarity and a health system attentive to the needs of its constituency were the best way to thwart a medical menace.
Since Dr. Basrur’s death on Monday afternoon, I have read about and reflected on the woman’s character and dedication to public service. I’ve learned that she studied at Western and the U of T in the late 1970s, but that she entered the medical world running. In 1983, she practised social medicine with rural health projects in some of the poorest corners of India and Nepal. No wonder she seemed to have no fear of potentially pandemic medical crises.
Back in Canada, in 1998, she became the first medical officer for the amalgamated City of Toronto, turning her attention to community health. She spearheaded “DineSafe,” an inspection system that ensured cleanliness in Toronto restaurants. As Chief Medical Officer for Ontario, Dr. Basrur recommended a ban on non-essential pesticide use and precipitated Ontario’s first Smokefree legislation in enclosed public places.
She even released a pivotal report on childhood obesity that has rekindled public funding for elementary school physical education and resurrected the nearly dead and gone Participaction initiative of the 1970s. The SARS crisis proved her toughest challenge, however. And the city’s mayor gave her full credit.
“She was professional, competent and calm,” David Miller said on CBC radio this week.
Sheela Basrur was all of that, for sure. In addition, I think she has become an example for us, perhaps passing along some of the courage she has exhibited in recent months battling to survive leiomyosarcoma – the fatal cancer in her body. During the time of my father’s demise, in the middle of the SARS outbreak, when even our American relatives refused to travel to Toronto to see him, for fear they’d be infected by the disease, that’s when I found something of a lifeline in Dr. Basrur.
Because even though my father did not survive his aphasia (he died the following year), I think I found some consolation in Dr. Basrur’s commitment to her community. She had shown by example, that public service belongs in and sustains this country’s health-care system.
