Barry Schoub

Barry David Schoub OMS MB BCh, MMed, MD, DSc, FRC Path, FCPath, FRSSAf, MASSAf was appointed as the first professor and head of the Department of Virology, University of the Witwatersrand in 1978, in 1982 director of the National Institute for Virology and January 2002 executive director of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, retiring at the end of April 2011.
In 1977 and 1978 he worked at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, USA as a United States Public Health Service international postdoctoral fellow and was also the first recipient of the James Gear International Postdoctoral Fellowship.
He has been a member of a number of international bodies and 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] and a polio expert for the international health regulations of the WHO. He served on the board of the International Association of Public Health Institutes (IANPHI) and the task force for immunization for WHO-AFRO. He was the founding chairman of the country’s National Advisory Group on Immunization and chaired the country’s advisory committee on Covid-19 vaccines. He has published over 290 scientific publications.
Among the awards he has received are the Order of Mapungubwe (Silver) from the state president, the Gold medal of the Academy of Science of South Africa, the Paul Harris Award of Rotary International, the 2012 and 2020 Jewish Achievers Award, the Lifetime Achievement award of the African Society for Laboratory Medicine, lifetime membership of FIDSSA, the 2012 Research Award of the NHLS and the Daubenton teaching prize of the University of the Witwatersrand.