Speakers & Organizers   

Biography
Jill Bellamy-Dekker served as bio-defence consultant and programme Director with an EU-NATO based defence forum in Brussels . In addition to content development and programme oversight she is a subject matter expert on Mid-East bio-warfare programmes and offensive biological weapons research laboratories. Currently she represents a number of clients within the pharmaceutical and defence industries in Brussels and Paris and regularly consults with Ministries of Public Health, Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Ministries of Defence on issues related to Mid-East state bio-warfare programmes, threat reduction, and bio-defence. Previously she was a special advisor to strategic affairs with McKenna, Long and Aldridge. With a background in veterinary public health regulation for notification of zoonoses and consequence management for agro and biological terrorism; she currently specializes in legal aspects of strategic vaccine stockpiling for national defence in the European Union and NATO. Jill Dekker has advised the European Commission on bio-terrorism and stockpiling for Category A bio-warfare agent counter-measures; resulting in (COM (2004) 701 Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament Preparedness and consequence management in the fight against terrorism and COM (2004) 698 Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament Prevention, preparedness and response to terrorist attacks. She regularly contributes to press and radio interviews and analysis on biological warfare and terrorism. In addition to publishing on bio-terrorism, orphan drug regulation and bio-warfare agents she is a listed bio-security expert with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD Paris). She is completing work on her Ph.D.'s at the University of Antwerpen in Belgium and is fluent in Dutch, German and Afrikaans. She is currently collaborating on a book assessing the Syrian pharmaceutical industry and biological warfare programmes.