Jane Wilson-Howarth

Jane Wilson-Howarth BSc (hons), CF, MSc (Oxon), BM, DCH, DCCH, DFSRH, FRSTM&H, FFTM RCPS (Glasg) is a British physician, lecturer and author.

She has written three travel health guides, two travel narratives, a novel and a series of wildlife adventures for children.

She has also contributed to anthologies of travellers tales, has written innumerable health articles for non-specialist readers, and many scientific/academic papers.

Jane Wilson was born in Epsom Hospital, Surrey, as one of the three children of Peggy (Margaret) Thomas (1926–2015), from London, and a bibliophile, Joe Wilson (1920–2011), from Ballymena in Northern Ireland.

She grew up in Stoneleigh, a suburb just north of Ewell Village.

She is married to Simon Howarth and the couple live between East Anglia and Kathmandu.

She attended Stoneleigh East County Infants, Junior and Senior Schools, and also Cheam High School, but was challenged by dyslexia.

She left school at 16 to study for an Ordinary National Diploma in sciences at Ewell Technical College (now North East Surrey College of Technology).

She then studied biological sciences at Plymouth Polytechnic, concentrating on invertebrates, pollution studies, environmental resource management, and completed a research project on cave microclimate and its influence on collembola.

This involved countless trips into Radford Cave and led to her first publication.

During cave exploration in the UK she made extensive collections of invertebrates to document the species living in lightless environments.

In 1973 she won the British Universities and Colleges individual canoe slalom event and on the same day also the seven-mile whitewater canoeing race.

In addition she won the national colleges sailing championship.

Wilson-Howarth spent six months on an overland trip to the Himalayan region; this was with a small team intent on finding new caves in Pakistan, India and Nepal and documenting what lived inside them.

She began some research on histoplasmosis, on bat rabies and made extensive zoological collections mostly for the British Museum (Natural History) / Natural History Museum, London.

In 1976 she was awarded a travelling scholarship by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, which funded a trip to Nepal.

The Nepal connection led to a veterinary research job and she wrote a thesis about rabbit parasites for an MSc from Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

Through this work she developed both an interest in immunology and a plan to work to help the poor in emerging nations.

She then studied for a medical degree at the University of Southampton.

In 1978–79 she rowed for Corpus Christi College, Oxford, the first year the college had fielded a ladies eight, when they won three "bumps" in Eights Week.

In 1983 she was awarded the BISH Medal by the Scientific Exploration Society for "courage and determination in the face of adversity".

The first Madagascar expedition led to a second, and this work contributed to the Ankarana Massif's recognition as an important refuge for mammals including the endangered crowned lemur, Sanford's brown lemur, as well as smaller wildlife and a previously unknown blind fish.

The Massif also proved to be a rich location where important sub-fossil giant lemur remains were discovered.

She gained a Diploma in Child Health (Royal College of Physicians, London 1992), a Diploma in Community Child Health (Royal College of Physicians, RCGP and Public Health Faculty, Edinburgh 1992), a Diploma of the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare (Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists 2007) and a fellowship in the Faculty of Travel Medicine, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow in 2009.

Wilson-Howarth lived in Nepal from 1993 until 1998 and then moved back there in 2017 where she worked as a volunteer writing clinical guidelines for Nepali paramedics and mentoring clinicians in remote mountain villages through the charity PHASE (Practical Help Achieving Self Empowerment).

She has also contributed material to the bilingual Covid19 Nepal Support website and she has articles about Covid-19 in the online Nepali newspaper Setopati.

Dervla Murphy, Eric Newby, Hilary Bradt, Gerald Durrell, David Attenborough, Joe Wilson (her father).

Wilson-Howarth started caving and also scuba diving while an undergraduate in Plymouth pursuing ecological studies.

She did some cave diving and was probably the first woman to do decompression dives in the subterranean "lake" in Pridhamsleigh Cavern in Devon.

In 2004 she took the sport up again at Cambridge, rowing in various races on the River Cam and at Eton Dorney.

While an undergraduate at Southampton she was involved in further expeditions – to Madagascar and (leading a team of eleven) Peru.

She also organised a medical elective with Save the Children in Ladakh.

for Médecins du Monde / Doctors of the World in 2016.

She works on occasion for Voluntary Service Overseas including in Nepal and also Nigeria.

She was also elected a fellow of the British Global and Travel Health Association in 2017.

Since qualifying as a doctor of medicine, Wilson-Howarth has worked in general medicine and obstetrics and gynaecology in Swindon, orthopaedics in Salisbury and paediatrics at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

She was employed on various child survival and hygiene promotion projects in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Indonesia, India and Nepal.

Wilson-Howarth served as a National Health Service general practitioner (GP) in Cambridgeshire for over 15 years when she taught Cambridge medical students about general practice and also international health.

She lectures on travel health too, has contributed to numerous textbooks, and on occasion to health stories for national newspapers.

She helped provide clinical care to Syrian refugees in Greece