John Walker-Smith is Australian, graduate of the University of Sydney. He has lived and worked in London since 1973.
He is one of the pioneers of paediatric gastroenterology.
In 1984, he had the concept of the growing importance of chronic diarrhoea in children across the world, particularly in developing communities. The widespread introduction of oral rehydration therapy led to a remarkable fall in deaths associated with acute diarrhoea. However, chronic diarrhoea remained an important problem with significant morbidity. Malnutrition was a notable outcome in many cases.
To focus on this issue, he convened the first meeting on the complex interaction between chronic diarrhoea and malnutrition. He invited Sandy McNeish to co-host the meeting, which was held in London from 5-7 November 1984. He decided to give the meeting a Commonwealth context, recognizing the unique opportunity the Commonwealth provided to bring together professionals from developed and developing countries who shared a common language and approach to these problems.
The meeting was co-sponsored by the British Paediatric Gastroenterology Group, the Indian Academy of Pediatrics, the Bangladesh Paediatric Society, the Australian College of Paediatrics, the Paediatric Association of Nigeria, the Malaysian Paediatric Association, the Canadian Pediatric Society, and the Singapore Paediatric Society. A book resulted from the meeting.
The second Commonwealth Conference on Chronic Diarrhoea was initiated by Santosh Mittal and was held in New Delhi from 29 November to 1 December 1991.
The third conference was held in Hong Kong in 1994, hosted by Peter Sullivan. At that meeting, he initiated the foundation of CAPGAN after consultation with the Commonwealth Secretariat. John Walker-Smith was elected chairman, later becoming President, and has since been called the Founder President. He attended the fifth conference in Darwin, Australia, in 1991, and later in London in 2011, Colombo in 2013, and Toronto in 2019.
He was present on behalf of CAPGAN at the creation of FISPGHAN at the World Congress in 2000, as President of CAPGAN. He secured CAPGAN’s status as an associate member.
He has fostered collaborative studies and training programs between Britain and developing countries of the Commonwealth. He had Commonwealth fellows from Bangladesh, Nigeria, Tanzania, and New Zealand in his training programs at Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children. He mentored two PhD candidates from Bangladesh and ran a diploma course in paediatric gastroenterology.
His research program at QEHC, in collaboration with Allan Phillips, focused on post-enteritis diarrhoea syndromes, cow’s milk-sensitive enteropathy, rapid stool viral diagnosis of gastroenteritis, and its management. QEHC, with many patients being first-generation immigrants or children of immigrants from Sylhet, Bangladesh, played a crucial role in shaping his understanding of problems in developing communities.
At St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, his research with Tom McDonald focused on Crohn’s disease in childhood. He continues to be the Life President of Crohn’s in Childhood Research Appeal (CICRA).
He has published extensively in research journals and textbooks, most notably "Diseases of the Small Intestine in Childhood," which has run to four editions, with the fourth co-authored by Simon Murch.
In his retirement, he transitioned to the humanities, first studying the history of medicine for nine years, then earning an MA in Christianity and the Arts from King’s College, London. He has recently published a book of 66 poems titled HOPE, BEAUTY AND FRIENDSHIP (Austin Macauley and Amazon).
