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Sheela Basrur, O.Ont (October 17, 1956  – June 2, 2008) was a Canadian medical doctor and former...

Sheela Basrur, O.Ont (October 17, 1956  – June 2, 2008) was a Canadian medical doctor and former 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, Canada, in 1956 to Indian immigrants Parvathi and Vasanth Basrur. 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