By GLORIA GALLOWAY The Globe and Mail, Page A15
07/30/03

While multiple generations of music fans gather at Downsview Park tonight to hear the Rolling Stones lament their lack of satisfaction, six SARS victims will lie in their isolation beds gasping for air and fighting for life.

Ten people remained in hospital with severe acute respiratory syndrome in the Toronto area yesterday, and all but four were in critical or deteriorating condition.

Among the ill were health-care workers infected while treating others with the virus.

Tecla Lin, a nurse at the West Park Healthcare Centre, was one of those workers. She died on July 19 after transmitting SARS to her husband, who also died of it.

Ms. Lin was honoured yesterday at a private funeral in Thornhill, north of the city. Her sons asked Doris Grinspun, the head of the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario, to give the eulogy.

"Wilson and Michael," Ms. Grinspun said, "we hope that in this time of senseless loss, you can feel proud of your mother and take some comfort in the fact that your sorrow is shared by the entire nursing community and friends."

Tonight's Rolling Stones extravaganza was arranged to give the city an economic boost, but its organizers decided that health care in this region where the disease closed hospitals and killed nurses should also benefit.

The health-care portion of Molson's Healthcare Workers Fund and Hospitality Relief Fund -- money generated through the sale of Stones paraphernalia and siphoned $1 at a time from each of the more than 400,000 tickets sold -- will pay for medical workers scholarships.

The scholarships honour Ms. Lin and Nelia Laroza, the other Toronto nurse who died of SARS, and will allow nurses and others to be certified in the treatment of infectious disease, said a spokesman for Ontario Health Minister Tony Clement.

And as a gesture of thanks from the people of Ontario, 2,790 of the concert tickets were handed out to workers at hospitals, ambulance services, public-health units and other agencies that waged daily battles with SARS. They will receive seating near the stage.

Colin D'Cunha, Ontario's chief medical officer of health who helped lead the fight against the disease, will attend the evening portion of the concert. So will Mr. Clement, who will spend the day thanking nurses, doctors and others for their courageous efforts.

But others whose names became associated with the SARS fight will not be there.

James Young, Ontario's public-security commissioner who supervised the anti-SARS plan at hospitals, will be out of town. Donald Low, chief microbiologist at Mount Sinai Hospital who offered scientific assessments during the outbreak and who was quarantined for 10 days, will be at work. So will Allison McGeer, the head of infection control at Mount Sinai, who contracted the disease.

And some front-line health-care workers will be continuing to fight the virus within their own bodies.

For example, two doctors who worked at the Lapsley Family Doctors Clinic in the northeast end of the city have been in hospital since early April. Another of the clinic's doctors who fell ill is no longer in hospital but will not be well enough to return to work until September. That leaves Rex Verschuren, the fourth member of the clinic's team, holding the fort.

Of the two still in hospital, one is "doing a lot better," said Dr. Verschuren. He added that he could be fully recovered by October or early November.

The other "is still not doing very well in hospital; we don't know if he's going to make it."

Dr. Verschuren has had help from other doctors while his colleagues recuperate, but he acknowledged that he cannot shoulder the entire load of what was once a four-doctor practice.

The ill physicians "are good guys, and the patients don't really want to leave them. And let's face it, there's no [other] doctors, anyway," Dr. Verschuren said.

So he is trying to hold things together until the other members of the clinic return.