Dr. Eileen de Villa, Toronto’s public health chief, taking leave of absence for medical treatment
Toronto Public Health’s assistant deputy medical director will leave her position soon after announcing a leave of absence from her job.
Dr. Eileen de Villa will have surgery Monday, and her colleagues there “have every intention of supporting her through and beyond this.”
Dr. Eileen de Villa became Toronto Public Health’s assistant deputy medical director in December 2016. (City of Toronto)
When she resigned as her position’s director, Dr. de Villa’s office said that she intended to “use this time to take care of a few personal matters.”
As of 5:30 p.m. Friday, the city said that she did not have other plans for her leave of absence and would be returning to work on Monday.
Toronto Public Health announced its appointment of Dr. de Villa as its new assistant deputy medical director in October 2016.
Dr. de Villa was hired by Toronto Public Health to help take charge of the agency’s response to COVID-19, its most serious health threat among the more than 70,000 cases reported so far.
The agency has received its first cases in Ontario, and has confirmed 21 new cases of COVID-19.
Dr. de Villa’s appointment came just months after Toronto’s chief medical officer, Dr. Eileen de Villa, announced that she would take leave of absence from her work as deputy medical officer of health for the City of Toronto.
She had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2015, which she said could have been stopped if she had had the proper treatments.
But she could not return to work to care for the city’s most vulnerable population, as she had been previously promised, because of a cancer diagnosis.
Dr. Eileen de Villa
