Honorary Life Members

The following leaders of Southern Africa’s Infectious Diseases Community are hereby acknowledged as honorary life members of the Federation of Infectious Diseases Societies of Southern Africa. They share the common characteristic of having made outstanding contributions to South African Medicine in the field of Infectious Diseases, Clinical Microbiology and Infection Control, and to FIDSSA itself.

Professor Lucille Blumberg is a deputy director at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, a branch of the National Health Laboratory Service, and is based in Johannesburg, South Africa. She heads the Epidemiology Division, which includes the units for Outbreak Response, Travel and International Health, Epidemiology and Surveillance, as well as the Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training programme. She is the medical consultant to the Special Pathogens Unit on rabies and Viral Haemorrhagic fevers. She is an Associate Professor at the University of the Stellenbosch, Western Cape Province. Prof Blumberg is a nationally and internationally renowned Infectious Diseases specialist, clinical microbiologist and travel medicine specialist. Her special interests are tropical and travel-related diseases, zoonosis, drug-resistant TB and management of severe malaria. She is a member of a number of South African and international expert groups and has been involved in a number of outbreaks in South Africa including cholera, rabies, Rift Valley fever, Lujo virus and influenza A H5N1.

FIDSSA tribute: Lucille is past President of the Infectious Diseases Society of Southern Africa and is its current treasurer. She is also the ex-officio secretary/treasurer of FIDSSA and continues to work tirelessly as a member of the FIDSSA council and its executive committee. Lucille has an indomitable spirit, and is a much-loved teacher, mentor and colleague to many generations of South African health practitioners, spanning human and veterinary medicine.

Dr Adrian Brink gained his MB BCh degree from the University of Pretoria in South Africa in 1984, before completing further medical training including his M Med (Clinical Microbiology) degree, in 1994. He currently works in Johannesburg, South Africa, as a Clinical Microbiologist, Ampath National Laboratory Services, Milpark Hospital, Johannesburg. His research interests include antibiotic resistance in intensive-care-related infections, and the pharmacokinetics and outcome measures of antibiotics in healthcare-associated infections.

FIDSSA tribute: Adrian is an internationally acclaimed microbiologist, and a much sort-after speaker at international meetings. Adrian was Chairman of the National Antibiotic Surveillance Forum (NASF) and is the ex-officio President of FIDSSA, having become its first president in 2005. Adrian’s drive and vision put FIDSSA firmly on the map and his continued contributions to FIDSSA have been outstanding. He is the driving force behind the highly successful InspiRaTIon meetings in association with Aspen Pharmacare, which provide continuing professional development to practitioners emphasizing the microbiology and management of respiratory tract infections in adults and children. Adrian has shunned many offers as a handbag model for Louis Vuitton, rather choosing to enjoy travelling the world as one of life’s bon viveurs.

Professor Charles Feldman was born and brought up in Johannesburg, South Africa. He obtained his MB BCh degree at the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, in 1975 and served his internship at Johannesburg Hospital. He subsequently did his fellowship training in Internal Medicine at Johannesburg Hospital and received his FCP (SA) in 1981. He received his PhD in 1991 for a thesis entitled “Aspects of Community-acquired Pneumonia” and his DSc in 2009 for a thesis entitled “Contributions to an Understanding of Community-acquired Pneumonia”. He was registered as a sub-specialist in Pulmonology in 1993 and was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP) in 1997. In 1988/89 he was a Research Fellow and Honorary Senior Visiting Colleague, in the Host Defence Unit, Department of Thoracic Medicine, National Heart and Lung Institute, and Royal Brompton Hospital, London, United Kingdom. In May 1995 he was appointed as Professor of Pulmonology and Chief Physician, at Johannesburg Hospital and the University of the Witwatersrand, a position, which he currently holds. He is a member of a number of national and international societies, including the American Thoracic Society (ATS), the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP), the European Respiratory Society and the British Thoracic Society. He is active in the ATS Conference Scientific Program Committee for the MTPI Assembly and is currently the South African representative on the European Respiratory Society. He has been President of the South African Thoracic Society on 2 previous occasions. Professor Feldman’s research interest is in the field of community-acquired pneumonia, and in particular pneumococcal pneumonia. In addition to being part of large international clinical collaborations recruiting cases of community-acquired pneumonia he has also contributed to basic research studies, investigating the effects of various pneumococcal virulence factors on human ciliated epithelium as well as the effects of antibiotics on pneumococcal growth and expression of virulence factors. He has more than 300 publications in books, book chapters, and in both indexed and DE accredited peer reviewed journals.

FIDSSA tribute: Charles is the Editor-in-Chief of FIDSSA’s journal The Southern African Journal of Epidemiology and Infection, having taken over from Professor Hendrik Koornhof. Charles has worked tirelessly to develop and improve the journal which is FIDSSA’s flagship, and he is recognized for his outstanding contribution to the society in this regard, as well as the many accolades for which he is known both nationally and on the international stage, that are detailed above.

Professor Hendrik Koornhof graduated in 1951 at the University of Cape Town and obtained the Diploma at Clinical Pathology at the Royal Postgraduate School of Pathology, Hammersmith, London in 1960, the Diploma in Bacteriology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, in 1966 and became a Founder Member of the Royal College of Pathology, London in 1973. He was awarded an Honorary DSc degree by the University of the Witwatersrand in 1997 and was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology in 2009. During his career as medical microbiologist from 1960 to 1991, he was Head of Medical Microbiology at the South African Institute for Medical Research for 31 years, and since 1971, with the establishment of the School of Pathology, he became Professor and Head of the Department of Pathology (Microbiological) (later renamed Department of Medical Microbiology) for twenty years. After his retirement in 1991 he was awarded Emeritus Professor and Honorary Professorial Research Fellow status by the University of the Witwatersrand and in that capacity was Acting Head of the Department of Clinical Microbiology from 1995 to 1998, Acting Head, Sexually Transmitted Infections Reference Centre (STIRC) from 2002 to 2004, Coordinator, Microbiology External Quality Assessment Programme of the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) from 2007 to 2010 and research advisor to the Epidemiology Division of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) from 2005 and the National Tuberculosis Reference Laboratory NHLS since 2006.

Regarding his research activities, he was Director of the MRC Emergent Pathogen Research Unit from 1981 to 1992 and his research activities covered a wide range of bacterial pathogens, including salmonellae, Yersinia enterocolitica, Campylobacter jejuni, Legionella pneumophila and multidrug-resistant Streptococcus pneumoniae and more recently Mycobacterium tuberculosis. He was a senior collaborator in evaluation studies of bacterial vaccines in South Africa, including several polyvalent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine formulations in gold miners in the 1970s initiated by Professor Robert Austrian, and under the direction of Professor Keith Klugman a 9-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine in children with and without HIV infection in 2003 and the earlier evaluation of the Salmonella typhi Vi capsular polysaccharide in rural school-aged children. Professor Koornhof received the gold medal from the South African Society for Microbiology in 1992 for outstanding services to microbiology in South Africa over an extended period.

FIDSSA tribute: Prof Koornhof is one of the true giants of South African Medicine as exemplified in his many achievements outlined above. He was made an honorary life member of FIDSSA in recognition of these contributions and his development of and ongoing contribution to the running of FIDSSA’s journal, the Southern African Journal of Epidemiology and Infection (SAJEI), as Editor-in-Chief before Charles Feldman.

Dr Steve Oliver worked in Medical Microbiology at Groote Schuur Hospital (GSH) for 35 years. His career started with the first appearance of MRSA at GSH, which sparked an interest in Infection Control that remained with him throughout. He was involved in the initial formation of a National Infection Control Society and the first congresses organized under the umbrella of that body. His interest in antibiotic stewardship resulted in the printing of a Groote Schuur Antibiotic Recommendations booklet compiled in consultation with colleagues in Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, that has gone on to be an annual publication distributed widely in the Western Cape. Teaching, both under- and postgraduate, has also been an abiding interest and medical students at UCT nominated him for a distinguished teacher award. He embraced the introduction of the new curriculum for undergraduate teaching enthusiastically and was responsible for microbiology teaching in this new venture.

FIDSSA tribute: Steve Oliver has made an outstanding contribution to Medical Microbiology in South Africa, both as a practitioner, and as a teacher and mentor. He has been a tireless supporter of Infection Control, Microbiology Infectious Diseases and numerous societies including FIDSSA throughout his career. His quiet, calm and professional approach has won him innumerable friends and admirers throughout his career and his retirement will leave the South African Microbiology, Infection Control and Infectious Diseases community much the poorer.

Professor Barry Schoub was born in Johannesburg and received his undergraduate MB BCh at the University of Witwatersrand, followed by an MD and DSc. He is a Fellow of the College of Pathology of South Africa, Fellow of the Royal College of Pathology, a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa and an elected member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. He was appointed as the first Professor and Head of the Department of Virology of the University of the Witwatersrand in 1978 at the age of 33 and in 1982 became the Director of the National Institute for Virology. In January 2002 Professor Schoub was appointed as the Executive Director of the newly established National Institute for Communicable Diseases, a post he has held until his retirement at the end of August 2010. In 1977 he received a United States Public Health Service international postdoctoral fellowship and was the first recipient of the James Gear International Postdoctoral Fellowship and was a Fogarty fellow at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, USA, until the latter part of 1978. Barry has been a member of a number of international bodies and has served as an advisor for several WHO programmes including polio, measles, RSV and influenza. He was a member of the Advisory Committee for Poliomyelitis Eradication [ACPE] of the World Health Organization. He was a member of the Board of the International Association of Public Health Institutes (IANPHI) and has served on the Task Force for Immunization for WHO (AFRO). Barry was a member of the interim board of the International Society of Influenza and Respiratory Viruses and served as South Africa’s delegate to the International Union of Microbiological Societies. He was the founding Chairman and current member of the National Advisory Group on Immunization of South Africa and was the founding President of the African Virology Association. He is the chairman of the Scientific Advisory Panel and vice-chairmen of the Board of Trustees of the Poliomyelitis Research Foundation He served on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the South African AIDS Vaccine initiative. He was on the International Scientific Advisory Committees of the 1990, 1996 and 1999 International Congresses of Virology and the 1996 and 1998 International AIDS Congresses He has published over 270 scientific publications, 16 chapters in books and has written a book on HIV/AIDS, entitled “AIDS & HIV in Perspective”, published by Cambridge University Press now in its 2nd edition. Amongst the awards he has received are the Paul Harris Award of Rotary International and the Daubenton prize of the University of the Witwatersrand.

FIDSSA tribute: Throughout his illustrious career, Barry Schoub has quietly gone about making an immense contribution to the medicine and science of virology and infectious diseases in its broadest sense. He led the NICD from its inception and helped build it into the force it now is in South Africa and the African continent. His thoughtfulness, dedication and humble approach to the many tasks that he has been set is an example to us all. He has made multiple invaluable contributions to FIDSSA and its individual societies over the years.

International Honorary Life Members of FIDSSA
The following internationally renowned specialists have been made honorary life members of FIDSSA:

Professor Nicholas White is Professor of Tropical Medicine at the Faculty of Tropical Medicine Mahidol University and Oxford University, and is also a Consultant Physician at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, UK. He has lived in Thailand and worked in the Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University since 1980. Professor White chairs the Wellcome Trust Tropical Medicine Research Programme in South-East Asia, and the Oxford Tropical Medicine Network (encompassing research groups in Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Kenya and the Gambia). He also currently co-chairs the World Health Organization anti-malarial treatment guidelines committee and the WHO Global Malaria Programme case management cluster. His principal research interests are malaria, particularly the pathophysiology and treatment of malaria, and also other severe tropical infectious diseases (melioidosis, typhoid, pyogenic, tuberculosis and fungal meningitis, dengue, viral encephalitis, pneumococcal infections, diphtheria and tetanus). His is currently on the editorial boards of 11 scientific journals including The Lancet, PLOS Medicine, the European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology and Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. He has published over 760 scientific papers and over 39 book chapters.

FIDSSA tribute: Nick has been a wonderful friend to FIDSSA since its inception, and has spoken at each conference since 2007. Nick’s enormous experience and leadership in the field of malaria and so many other serious tropical infectious diseases shines out in his plenaries and talks at parallel sessions. He is always willing to roll up his sleeves and get involved, and we have been extremely fortunate that he has been willing to return again and again.

Dr David Livermore gained his BSc at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh in 1978 and his PhD from the University of London in 1983. He worked at the London Hospital Medical College form 1980 until 1997, then moving to the Central Public Health Laboratory (CPHL), which became part of the Health Protection Agency in 2003. He is now Director of the Agency’s Antibiotic Resistance Monitoring and Reference Laboratory (ARMRL), where he has responsibility for investigating bacteria with unusual resistance phenotypes and assessing their mechanisms and public health importance. Dr Livermore serves or ahs served on various editorial boards and scientific committees, including, from 2001-7, the UK Government’s Specialist Advisory Committee on Antibiotic Resistance. He has published over 300 papers on antibiotics and resistance in peer-reviewed journals.

FIDSSA tribute: Like Nick White, David Livermore has been a wonderful friend to FIDSSA and has been involved in many of our conferences. His unique lecturing style has audiences captivated and his excellence in teaching and getting to the heart of the issue makes him an in-demand international speaker. We look forward to welcoming David back to South Africa in the future.