NEW DELHI: India has established a National Task Force on brain health with the aim of improving the accessibility and quality of brain healthcare at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels, according to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) new global status report on neurology.
India’s task force plans to implement a national brain health programme by scaling up the Karnataka Brain Health Initiative (KaBHI), a comprehensive and collaborative public health programme aimed at reducing the burden of neurological disorders across Karnataka, the WHO report stated.
Highlighting KaBHI as a catalysing policy initiative for brain health and neurological disorders in India, the report released on Tuesday said, “By uniting key stakeholders and sectors around a needs-based, evidence-informed, and integrated approach to neurological disorders, KaBHI has paved the way for policy prioritisation of brain health in India.”
“Following the programme’s state-wide implementation in 2023, a National Task Force on Brain Health was constituted by the Indian Health Ministry in 2024 to improve the accessibility and quality of brain health care at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels, inter alia by scaling KaBHI to the national level,” it added.
The KaBHI was launched as a collaborative effort between the Department of Health and Family Welfare of the Karnataka government and the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, in consultation with NITI Aayog, the premier public policy think tank of the Government of India.
The KaBHI initiative offers an evidence-based, integrated, and life-course approach to strengthen neurological service delivery in low-resource settings.
According to the report, the programme comprises eight foundational pillars, including evidence-based diagnosis and management protocols, as well as the strengthening of referral pathways. These include 32 new brain health clinics providing specialised multidisciplinary care, rehabilitation, and post-diagnostic support.
It also envisages capacity-building through task shifting with structured training programmes for community health officers, accredited social health activist workers, and primary care physicians, alongside a tele-neurology service and a state-wide network of neurologists.
Additionally, the initiative provides digital health management, including a secure and systematic digital data monitoring and records system, as well as planned state-wide registries for dementia, stroke, and other neurological disorders.
It further incorporates advocacy, awareness, and risk reduction strategies through mass media campaigns, community engagement, sensitisation programmes, and partnerships with celebrities as brand ambassadors for brain health.
The programme facilitates intersectoral coordination with national and state-level programmes, including those focused on mental health, non-communicable diseases (NCDs), reproductive, maternal, child, and newborn health, ageing, and palliative care.
It also includes research and an evidence-based approach through an embedded monitoring and evaluation framework to assess KaBHI and its impact.
The report noted that KaBHI was developed in consultation with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the WHO’s Brain Health Unit, aligning with the strategic objectives of the Intersectoral Global Action Plan on Epilepsy and Other Neurological Disorders 2022–2031 (IGAP). It serves as a model for replication at the national level.
The new WHO report warned that less than one in three countries worldwide has a national policy to address the growing burden of neurological disorders, which are responsible for over 11 million deaths globally each year.
It further revealed that neurological conditions now affect more than 40 per cent of the global population — over three billion people.
The top ten neurological conditions contributing to death and disability as of 2021 were stroke, neonatal encephalopathy, migraine, Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, diabetic neuropathy, meningitis, idiopathic epilepsy, neurological complications linked to preterm birth, autism spectrum disorders, and cancers of the nervous system.