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Prof Dave Lubbe honoured with Lifetime Achievement Award

17 July 2019 | Story Valentino Ndaba

The highest body of professional academic accountants in the country, the Southern African Accounting Association (SAAA), recently honoured Prof Dave Lubbe with the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award at a gala dinner at Emperors Palace in Johannesburg. Prof Lubbe is a Research Associate and an Emeritus Professor at the School of Accountancy at the University of the Free State (UFS).

The SAAA honoured him “for his distinguished service and valuable contribution to accounting education in South Africa”. He was recognised for his contributions to audit committees in the private and public sectors, environmental accounting and auditing, the philosophy of auditing, audit risk and the expectation gap between the audit profession and users of financial information.

A friend of firsts

Prof Lubbe was the first person to attain a doctorate in Auditing in South Africa, the first to author an Afrikaans auditing handbook, the first South African recipient of the Ernst & Young Outstanding Accounting Research Award in 2002 and the first Chartered Accountant to be awarded the Stals Prize for Economic and Management Sciences by the South African Academy for Science and Arts in 2007.

His astounding track record also earned him the university’s 2018 Executive Management Award at the 36th Chancellor’s Distinguished Alumni Awards. Not only is he a former master’s student at the university, but he also went on to serve as a senior lecturer for 41 years.

Called to serve

In his lifetime, Prof Lubbe has answered the call to serve as a management consultant, committee member, a forensic accountant, and an assessor to high court fraud cases.

Beyond the field of accounting

His achievements span beyond the accounting field. Not only has Prof Lubbe completed all of South Africa’s well-known ultramarathons, he holds a black belt in karate. His love for art on the other hand, has seen him win national poetry competitions and establishing himself as a lyricist.

News Archive

Medical team performs first hybrid procedure in the Free State

2014-12-08

The days when a heart operation meant hours in an operating theatre, with weeks and even months of convalescing, will soon be something of the past.

A team of cardiologists from the University of the Free State’s (UFS) Faculty of Health Sciences once again made medical history when they performed the first hybrid procedure in the Free State.

The Department of Paediatric Cardiology, in conjunction with the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, performed this very successful procedure on a 45-year-old woman from Kuruman.

During the procedure of 30 minutes, the patient’s thorax was opened up through a mini thoracotomy to operate on the beating heart.

“The patient received an artificial valve in 2011. Due to infection, a giant aneurism developed from the left ventricle, next to the aorta. Surgery would pose a very high risk to the patient. Furthermore, her health was such that it would contribute to problems during open-heart surgery,” explains Prof Stephen Brown, Head of the UFS’s Department of Paediatric Cardiology.

“After the heart was opened up through a mini thoracotomy, the paediatric cardiologists performed a direct puncture with a needle to the left ventricle cavity. A Special sheath was then placed in the left ventricle to bypass the catheters. Aided by highly advanced three-dimensional echocardiography and dihedral X-ray guidance, the opening to the aneurism, located directly below the artificial aorta valve, was identified and the aneurism cannulated.”

During the operation, a special coil, called a Nester Retractor, was used for the first time on a patient in South Africa to obtain stasis of extravasation and ensure the stability of devices in the aneurism.

“This is highly advanced and specialist work, as we had to make sure that the aneurism doesn’t rupture during manipulation and the devices had to be positioned in such a way that it doesn’t cause obstruction in valve function or the coronary artery. The surgical team was ready all the time to switch the patient to the heart-lung machine should something go wrong, but the procedure was very successful and the patient was discharged after a few days.”

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