Toss some thanks to my sister (or: Dr. Eileen de Villa: Helping Toronto fight COVID-19)

I get lots of kind words from both friends and strangers from my former hometown of Toronto about my sister, Dr. Eileen de Villa, Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health. She leads Toronto Public Health, Canada’s largest public health agency and which provides public health programs for Canada’s largest city and economic capital. As you might expect, she’s been working very long days for the past weeks, as COVID-19 has grown from mystery illness to epidemic to full-blown pandemic, while maintaining a level of chill required to manage a crisis of this magnitude.

Here’s she is at a news conference in March 12th, courtesy of CP24, Toronto’s 24-hour local news channel…

…and here she is on March 13th:

Her birthday was last week, and I was able to FaceTime with her for only a few minutes. She didn’t have any time to celebrate, as it’s been super-long days seven days a week for her, as she and her team manage Toronto’s response to this crisis. It’s a difficult, high-stakes challenge, but I’m glad that she’s on the case.

Once this is over, be sure to send her your thanks.

Worth checking out

Here’s Eileen speaking about the opioid crisis:

And here’s some reading material from the Toronto media:

• Toronto Star: How Toronto’s chief medical officer became the people’s doctor
• Toronto Life: Q&A: Toronto’s chief medical officer on supervised injection sites, and why drug leniency may be good policy
• Toronto Life: Q&A: Eileen de Villa, Toronto’s medical officer of health, on dealing with Doug Ford’s cuts