Two Wits academics talk superbugs
- By Wits University
Two distinguished Wits academics will present a lecture titled Superbugs: Are the bugs winning the war? Professor Guy Richards and Professor Adriano G. Duse will address this issue at the Wits Faculty of Health Sciences’ 10th Prestigious Research Lecture on Monday, 30 June 2014 at the Wits School of Public Health Auditorium in Parktown, Johannesburg. Read more.
Professor Guy Richards
Professor Guy Richards is currently Academic Head of the Division of Critical Care in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Wits. He is Director of the Department of Critical Care at the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital (CMJAH) and an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine and Pulmonology at Wits.
He obtained his medical degree in 1978, specialised in internal Medicine in 1985 and subsequently qualified as a pulmonologist and intensivist. He received his PhD in Medicine in 1992 from Wits.
Richards has twice been the Co-Chairman of the South African national Critical Care and Thoracic Society Congress and he has given well over 100 invited presentations at national and international congresses. He has been awarded best research paper, best presentation and best publication on a number of occasions at congresses of the SA Thoracic Society and the SA Critical Care Society of Southern Africa (CCSSA). To date, he has authored 11 book chapters and over 100 scientific papers. In 2013 he was awarded the PV Tobias convocation award for excellence in teaching at Wits.
Since 1992, Richards has taken an active role in the Guideline Working Groups of the South African Thoracic Society, covering asthma, community-acquired pneumonia, COPD, and smoking cessation and similarly with the Nesibhopo group, which devises critical care guidelines on behalf of the CCSSA.
He is Chairman of the Pharmacy and therapeutic Committee at CMJAH and is chairman of the Gauteng Provincial formulary committee for the Provincial Pharmacy and Therapeutic committee.
Professor Adriano G. Duse
Professor Adriano G. Duse is the Head of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases in the School of Pathology in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Wits. He started his career at the NHLS (the then SAIMR) as a medical technologist and went on to complete his MBBCh at Wits, specialising as a Microbiologist. He then went on to become a consultant before being appointed as the Head of the division in 2002.
He is passionate about education and teaches both under- and postgraduate students in the Faculty and has received numerous teaching awards at the University. In 2005 he introduced the training of infection prevention and control nurses in the form of an Advanced Diploma in Infection Control consisting of a two year training course in conjunction with the Department of Nursing, at the Faculty of Health Sciences.
Duse has held positions of Chairman of the Infection Control Society of South Africa (ICASA, now ICSA), Sub-Saharan Ambassador for the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), and Council Member of the International Society for Infectious Diseases (ISID).
He currently holds the post of Southern African Chair for the Global Antibiotic Resistance Partnership (GARP). GARP is a project of the Centre for Diseases Dynamics, Economics and Policy (CDDEP), United States, which works to create greater awareness among policymakers in low-middle income countries about the growing threat of antibiotic resistance and to develop country-relevant issues.
He also serves on the Advisory Committee of the International Federation of Home Hygiene and as External Infection Prevention and Control Expert Consultant for Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers to the WHO and organisations such as International SOS.
Duse’s expertise in viral haemorrhagic fevers (VHF) resulted in his appointment by the World Health Organisation, Geneva, to act as expert consultant and provide education to health care staff and case management during the 2005 Angolan Marburg VHF outbreak and the 2006/7 Kenyan Rift Valley fever outbreak. In 2008 Duse provided infection prevention and control support to the South African National Department of Health for a VHF outbreak caused by a novel arenavirus (Lujo virus) outbreak that occurred in Johannesburg.
In December 2012 he was appointed WHO expert consultant for the Infection Control Group for the Ebola haemorrhagic fever outbreak response team in Uganda. In April 2014 he was deployed to Liberia to assist with the containment of the Ebola virus outbreak in his capacity as a VHF infection prevention and control expert.