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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

Researchers receive study grant for research into Congo Fever

2015-03-10

UFS researchers will be contributing significantly to the search for a vaccine against the deadly tick-borne disease known as Congo Fever.

Prof Felicity Burt from the Department of Medical Microbiology and Virology was recently awarded a research grant by the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) to study candidate vaccines for Crimean-Congo heamorrhagic fever (CCHF) virus and other arboviruses.

Arboviruses are viruses transmitted by mosquitoes, ticks, or other arthropods.

Prof Burt is an internationally-recognised expert on the Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF). The Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF) virus is a tick-borne virus that is associated with severe haemorrhagic disease in South Africa and other parts of Africa, Asia, and eastern Europe. Her interests focus on medically significant viruses that are transmitted by ticks and mosquitoes. Her research group is involved in determining the immune responses that are induced by different viral proteins.

Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever (CCHF) virus, a tick- borne virus found in Africa, Asia, the Balkans, and eastern Europe, causes severe viral haemorrhagic fever outbreaks.

Although a number of tick species are capable of becoming infected with CCHF virus, ticks of the genus Hyalomma, commonly referred to in SA as the “bont-legged ticks”, are the principal vector. The ticks have distinctive brown and white bands on their legs.

In February 1981, the first case of CCHF was recognised in South Africa (SA). To date, there have been nearly 200 cases of CCHF infection in SA with a 20% fatality rate. The majority of cases occurring in SA were in patients from the Northern Cape and Free State provinces.

“The funding that has been awarded will be used to profile immune responses against CCHF viral proteins, and investigate mechanisms and strategies to enhance these immune responses. We hope that the study will contribute knowledge towards the development of a vaccine against this medically significant virus.”

For more information or enquiries contact news@ufs.ac.za.

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