Healing the Invisible: Why Brain-Injury Rehabilitation Deserves Center-Stage in India's Health Story

According to reports, 38 crore online consultations were done on India's e-Sanjeevani tele-medicine hub. This shows that it does not really matter to people if they connect to doctors online if travelling is expensive or not available.

- DR GAURISH KENKRE

A head-injury survivor can leave casualty with the reassuring label of "mild" trauma and a spotless CT scan, yet spend the next six months battling fuzzy memory, sudden mood swings and bone-deep fatigue. Approximately 71% of head-injury cases that are recorded in Indian hospitals fall into the "mild" band of the Glasgow Coma Scale. However, international follow-up studies confirm that up to 50% of patients who have suffered head injuries continue to struggle months after the stitches and scans have been forgotten.

What silently destroy careers and classrooms are not skull fractures, but rather hidden consequences associated with the injury.

WHY VISIBILITY MATTERS

Since these disruptions and reduced quality of life seldom show up on scan, referrals to neuro-rehabilitation are often delayed or never written at all. When such referrals are missed, affected individuals may have transient cognitive fog, depression and other brain-related disorders that may result in lost income. According to studies from low- and middle-income settings including India, only one in six people with moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) gets the chance to go to a specialized rehab unit. Most of these patients are discharged for ad-hoc home care. However, they have a good chance of making a good recovery if they are referred to a rehab facility.

BARRIERS TO SPOTLIGHTING REHAB