Patrick Vaughan, who has died aged 87, was a pre-eminent epidemiologist and a director of the Tropical Epidemiology Unit at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). He authored more than 120 papers and gave health advice at the highest level: to the World Health Organization, governments, the World Bank and the NHS. He also advised charities, including the organisers of Live Aid, who in 1985 wanted to know how best to channel the £150m they had raised to relieve famine in Ethiopia.
All this he achieved despite having reached the age of 12 with little formal education and being barely able to read. Nevertheless, the headteacher at Bishop Wordsworth’s grammar school in Salisbury offered him a place, conditional on his catching up with his classmates within a year. He succeeded, transcending his chaotic childhood to gain four A-levels and, in 1955, a place at Guy’s Hospital medical school in London. William Golding, a teacher at the school, reputedly said that Vaughan’s strength of character inspired Piggy, one of the characters in his 1954 novel Lord of the Flies.
