Steve Jones obituary

Original article by Wendy Dickinson

My friend Steve Jones, who has died aged 77, had a working life devoted to humanitarian causes, with a particular focus on Bangladesh and India. In retirement he then dedicated a sizeable portion of his time to charity work, helping people with the lung disease pulmonary fibrosis get the help and treatment they needed.

Steve was born in London to John and Lettie, who were both teachers and shared the surname Jones. After secondary school in Crawley, West Sussex, he studied geography at Bristol University, worked for a short time as an economist for a company that became part of British Airways and then embarked on further studies at Cambridge University, where he gained a certificate in anthropology and began a PhD.

While there he became involved with Operation Omega, a group that smuggled humanitarian aid across the border from India to Bangladesh during its war with Pakistan in 1971. This led him to cut short his studies so that he could begin work as a consultant economist and project planner. Over the years he worked on many projects, including for the University of New South Wales from 1984 to 1986 in the Solomon Islands on a smallholder project and a post-cyclone survey.

In 1989 his work took him back to Bangladesh, where he was employed by the World Bank to develop a flood action plan. Fourteen years of his life, from 1992 to 2006, were then spent with the Department for International Development, working on ways to help tackle the social and economic problems related to rural poverty in India.

He was also particularly proud of a cyclone recovery and reconstruction project he worked on in 2007 for the World Bank, which led to the building of cyclone shelters in Bangladesh.

In 2006 he became a trustee and then chair of trustees of the Humanitarian Centre in Cambridge, which later became the Centre for Global Equality. Two years later he had to leave work after being diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, but eventually he was lucky enough to receive a lung transplant that prolonged his life considerably.

That allowed him to focus on being a trustee, chair and patient president of the charity Action for Pulmonary Fibrosis, giving over the last decade of his life to fighting on behalf of people with the disease so that they can be provided with better diagnosis, care and treatment. He was also president of the European Pulmonary Fibrosis Federation.

In 1976 he met Hilary Gretton, a nurse, and they married five years later. She survives him, along with their children, Rosie, David and Euan, and seven grandchildren.