Jane Wilson-Howarth

She has written double spread travel health features for all but two issues of Wanderlust (a total of over 200 articles so far) and also some for Condé Nast Traveller. She has occasionally contributed to The Independent newspaper and other national publications. In 2019, Simon Calder travel editor of the Independent newspaper called Wilson-Howarth one of the five most impressive travel authorities. Wilson-Howarth is a member of the Society of Authors, the innovative Walden Writers cooperative, and Cambridge Writers. She often gives talks and readings especially in East Anglia. She was featured by Lonely Planet's on-line travel magazine.

She lectures on travel health too and has contributed to numerous textbooks, and on occasion to health stories for national newspapers. She helped provide clinical care to Syrian refugees in Greece for Médecins du Monde / Doctors of the World in 2016. She works on occasion for Voluntary Service Overseas including in Nigeria. Since early in 2015, Wilson-Howarth has been a trustee for Health Books International (see www.healthbooksinternational.org ) which was formerly Teaching-aids at Low Cost whose mission is to ship medical textbooks to low income countries.

Her first novel Snowfed Waters was self-published early in 2014 and was picked up and launched in February 2017 in the Indian subcontinent by the Delhi-based publisher Speaking Tiger. The book is a fictional sequel to A Glimpse of Eternal Snows.

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

Wilson-Howarth is active in the Walden Writers cooperative, set up in Saffron Walden, Essex, by authors Amy Corzine and Martyn Everett in 2008, to cross-promote the work of its members, organise literary events, publish a magazine and exchange information and support. Some meetings are workshops for members' works in progress, and covering matters of printing, distribution and marketing that were once the domain of publishers. Other members include biographer Clare Mulley, children's authors Victor Watson, Rosemary Hayes and Penny Speller, and historian Lizzie Sanders.

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

Wilson-Howarth's writing almost invariably has a travel theme. Her first book (when she wrote as Jane Wilson), Lemurs of the Lost World (1990, 1995), is about expeditions to Madagascar and was described as the finest travel book thus far written about Madagascar by Dervla Murphy in the Times Literary Supplement. The Essential Guide to Travel Health has appeared in five editions having originally launched as Bugs Bites & Bowels in 1995. Your Child Abroad: a travel health guide is a family manual written in collaboration with paediatrician Dr Matthew Ellis. How to Shit Around the World is a compilation of toilet tales, and includes an introduction by Kathleen Meyer, author of How to Shit in the Woods. A Glimpse of Eternal Snows is a poignant travel memoir set in Cambridge and Nepal; it has received praise in the press; a second edition was published in the UK in October 2012 and in North America in February 2013. A third edition was launched in India in 2015.

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

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

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 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.

Jane Wilson-Howarth (born 1954) 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 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 north of Ewell Village. She is married to Simon Howarth and the couple live in Kathmandu.