Hugh Jackson

Robert Hugh Jackson OBE MC (9 May 19185 October 2013) was a British paediatrician most notable for his campaign to introduce childproof packaging to medicine.

Life Hugh Jackson was born in Oldham, United Kingdom to a medical family. He finished school at Oundle and did his medical schooling at Oxford. He and another student restarted a boys' club for deprived youth while they were at Oxford. Normally Jackson would have done his clinical training in London but because of the beginning of World War II, he was part of the first group to be fast-tracked in clinical training at Oxford University. Jackson was fortunate to see some of the early successes with penicillin. He trained in the A&E department at Radcliffe Infirmary and also in Wingfield Orthopaedic Hospital where he met his future wife Shirley who was doing research in traumatic nerve damage.

In 1976, with Professor Donald Court, he persuaded the King’s Fund to provide start-up funding and office space to form the Child Accident Prevention Trust (CAPT).

He contributed a section on abdominal pain in pediatric emergencies to the 1978 book, Management of medical emergencies.

He was appointed OBE in 2000, and was awarded the James Spence Medal by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in recognition of his contribution to child health.