BSMS > About BSMS > Events > Speaker biographies

Humanitarian Responses | Speaker biographies

Speaker Biographies

Please see below for full biographies of each individual due to speak at the Humanitarian Response: The role of the pharmacist conference.

Trudi Hilton

Since leaving the NHS 6 years ago Trudi has been involved in medicines management projects in some of the disaster-prone areas around the world including Afghanistan, the Philippines and the Middle East.

With the support of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society (RPS) she set up the Humanitarian Aid and Response Network (HARN) to meet others also working in the field and to share learning and best practice.

She has worked as a consultant with agencies such as the World Health Organisation, DfID and Save the Children to transfer skills and build capacity in the pharmaceutical supply chain in resource-poor settings.

Through her work Trudi has met up with many excellent pharmacists and collaborated with pharmacy associations in many countries as well as the International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP ), speaking at their annual conferences in Thailand and Germany.

Her experiences have shown her how much difference pharmacists can make in improving access to medicines by patients in all settings and she is keen to encourage others to do the same.

Trudi was presented with the Special Recognition Award by the President of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in 2015 for her work in the Humanitarian sector.

Jon Barden

Jonathan is a humanitarian specialist with detailed project management, civil-military and logistics expertise gained over 22 years of working with emergencies as well as recovery and rural development.

Following a decade working in Afghanistan, Jonathan lived and worked in Sudan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and, since returning to the UK, has lead emergency responses in places such as Haiti, Kenya, Serbia, India, the Philippines and Vanuatu for non-governmental organisations and the UK Government.

Jonathan started working as a Humanitarian Advisor for the DfID Conflict, Humanitarian and Security Department’s Operations Team in 2011. He is the lead on the UK Emergency Medical Teams project. He was the UK staffing lead for the DfID Ebola Crisis for which he received an MBE. In 2015 he deployed to the Vanuatu cyclone and Nepal earthquake responses.

Michael Deats

Michael is the Group Lead at the World Health Organisation on Falsified and Substandard medicines and is responsible for the Global Surveillance and Monitoring System. He has worked for the WHO since 2011.

Prior to that he was the Head of Enforcement for the United Kingdom’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) between 2005-2011 where he led a team of 45 people responsible for the investigation of all serious breaches of medicines legislation and the prosecution of medicine counterfeiters.

Before joining the MHRA he was a police officer based in London specialising in the investigation of serious and organised crime. He retired from the Police in 2005 in the rank of Detective Superintendent.

Michael has worked in over 60 Countries with the Police, Regulatory Agencies and the World Health Organization.

Ashok Soni

Graduating as a pharmacist from Portsmouth School of Pharmacy, Ashok Soni began his life long career and commitment to pharmacy.

Over the last thirty years Ash has held a number of notable positions from owning and operating his own pharmacy to working for Lambeth Southwark and Lewisham LPC, sessional work with the local GP practice and consultancy work for a number of pharmaceutical companies.

In addition to this Ash has also held positions on boards for Lambeth Primary Care Trust, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society English Pharmacy Board, Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee and National Pharmacy Association, just to name a few.

He was appointed as a member of the NHS Future Forum to review the Health & Social Care Bill and the appropriateness of elements of that Bill. Ash was a member of the Clinical Advice and Leadership workstream in the first phase. In the second phase he jointly led the workstream on 'The NHS's Role in the Public's Health'. In the third phase, hewas involved in the review of the NHS Constitution.

Ash is a Fellow of The Royal Pharmaceutical Society and Honorary Fellow of The UCL School of Pharmacy. He was awarded an OBE in the New Year’s Honours for services to pharmacy and the NHS. He is a Board member of the South London Local Education & Training Board and is the Clinical Network Lead with NHS Lambeth Clinical Commissioning Group. Ash has most recently been appointed the President of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

Helen Gordon

Helen joined the Royal Pharmaceutical Society on 1 July 2010 and has developed its role, work and impact as the newly dedicated professional body for pharmacists in Great Britain.

Under Helen’s leadership and direction the Society has created a much stronger patient and member focused organisation which has introduced a professional development and recognition system for pharmacists, published professional standards as well as guidance, and has increased its profile and contribution to the health community in the UK and international pharmacy. The organisation has gained greater recognition for speaking on behalf of the pharmacy profession, a higher level of participation from patient groups, and is actively working in collaboration with other Royal Colleges on initiatives that benefit patients and the public. The Society is also home for the well-known and trusted publisher, Pharmaceutical Press.

Helen has a career in health care spanning 33 years. Originally training as a nurse at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, she progressed through a number of senior clinical and managerial positions, including the roles of Executive Director of Operations /Chief Nurse, Chief Executive at Hillingdon Hospital, and then from 2000-2005 she was Chief Executive at Queen Mary’s Sidcup NHS Trust. She then moved to national roles, and held the position of Chief Executive of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists from 2005 to 2010 before moving to the RPS.

Half of the RCOG’s members live and work overseas, and the College examines doctors throughout the world in the field of obstetrics and gynaecology. Whilst Helen was at RCOG, the College set up an international arm focussing on developing practice to tackle maternal mortality and raise standards of care for women and their babies.

For the past 8 years she has contributed to higher education as a Governor for Ravensbourne College and held the position of Chair of the Audit Committee there. Since 2013 Helen has chaired the new Alumni Relationship and Development Advisory Board at Henley Business School/ University of Reading. Helen holds a Masters Degree in Business Administration from Henley Business School. She was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of General Practitioners in November 2013.

Alastair Bolt

Alistair qualified as a pharmacist in 1978, and since that time has worked exclusively in hospitals.

He worked for 3 years in Tanzania maintaining medicinal supplies to a remote hospital. He says that logistics can be a challenge with wholesale deliveries only every 6 months. He also spent 6 weeks in Dominica and Sri Lanka setting up small-scale local units for producing eye drops. He acted as advisor to the WHO manual for the local small-scale production of eye drops.

Alistair was the first pharmacist involved with the TKM trial (against Ebola in Sierra Leone in 2015) and was responsible for identifying appropriate aseptic equipment and installing and testing it. He was also responsible for training three other pharmacists who carried on the work. In addition he wrote SOPs for the equipment and clinical trial protocols. Alistair writes an annual pharmacy column in the journal Africa Health.

Alistair is a Lay Minister in his local Anglican church and is married with two grown-up children. His main hobby, when he has the time, is photography.

Emma Foreman

Emma started out as a dispensing assistant at a small community pharmacy in Hitchin before heading off to Aston University in 1992.

Three years later, she emerged with a pharmacy degree and did her pre-registration training at Northwick Park Hospital. She qualified in 1996 and worked first at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, then back to Northwick Park where she became a Resident Pharmacist. Looking for a new challenged, Emma signed up for VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) and embarked on a 2 year placement in Ghana, West Africa. On her return, not finding many opportunities for work in health development she specialised in oncology – working at St Barts for 2 years before taking an Aseptic Unit manager’s post in High Wycombe. She moved to Brighton in 2008 and is now the Lead Pharmacist for Cancer and R&D at BSUH. She is a founder member of the Brighton-Lusaka Pharmacy Link, aiming to support pharmacy colleagues in Lusaka.

Ines Beca Carretero

Ines graduated in Spain as a pharmacist in 2006, after which, she came to the UK and worked in a community pharmacy for two years.

During this time she did a Masters Degree at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in Humanitarian Studies, and conducted a field research study in Cape Town, South Africa with MSF Belgium on their HIV/AIDS/MDRTB project in Khayelitsha. The resulting dissertation was entitled: "Determinants of treatment compliance in low resource settings" A case study of MSF HIV/AIDS project in Khayelitsha"

In 2009 Ines started working with MSF France. For her first mission she spent 12 months in Malawi, Chiradzulu district, working as a field pharmacist for their HIV/AIDS MDRTB project.

After that, Ines was sent to Pakistan because of the floods that occurred in August 2010. Her role was project pharmacist with the Emergency desk and the Emergency Coordination. She spent two months in Pakistan. MSF’s work there was treating diarrhoea and cholera, establishing cholera treatments centres and also tackling malnutrition in the south of the country.

In March 2011, Ines was sent to Aweil in South Sudan to a mother and child healthcare project. MSF works with the Ministry of Health in their hospital in Aweil. Ines went there as a "coaching pharmacist". Her role was to coach and train a ‘first mission’ pharmacist for three months and also to prepare an emergency stock of medicines in Juba, the capital, in the event of conflict.

In May 2011, Ines spent one month in Amman in Jordan, on an MSF Reconstructive Surgical project for victims of war in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Palestine. Her role there was to establish a new local purchasing system of medicines.

In September 2011 Ines began working for the NHS in Worthing. She is now working as a Band 7 Specialist clinical pharmacist at BSUH, currently in Cardiology.

In November 2015 Ines went to work in the "Western Sahara" refugee camps in Algeria, with a German NGO "Medico International" based in Frankfurt. She went for 12 days as a consultant pharmacist to lead a workshop for Ministry of Health personnel on establishing the need for medicines for the project year. This was a capacity building project which this NGO has been carrying out in Western Sahara since 2006.