Submitted by lac59 on Wed, 13/05/2026 - 11:25
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) needs to be urgently prioritised on the world health agenda, argues a new Lancet Global Health article, led by a research group from the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at Cambridge University.
The researchers form part of the Global Coalition for TBI as a Notifiable and Chronic Condition.
From the global view, the picture for Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) looks bleak.
TBI can impact anyone at any age, with the potential for life-long disability and chronic health issues. Most seriously, the disproportionate burden of TBI falls on low and middle-income countries: there are more injuries here, and patients often lack access to timely, safe and high-quality care, resulting in poorer health outcomes. In these settings, capturing the full rates brain injury across their populations is also challenging, meaning prevention strategies cannot be implemented easily either.
Traumatic brain injuries, even mild ones, can trigger lifelong cognitive, emotional, and neurological issues. This can lead to permanent disability, leading to financial strain on individuals, families, and national health systems. Carers in these cases are often unpaid family members.
Presenting the case from the Global Coalition for TBI, Lancet article authors, Sara Venturini (University of Cambridge) and Kathyrn Hendrick (Canadian Traumatic Brain Injury Research Consortium), stress these issues need to be made visible on the global health policy agenda.
Sara Venturini, a neurosurgery resident at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, commented: “To address TBI globally, it takes a multi-faceted approach. We need to engage multiple professional groups and decision-makers. We are proposing a framework to include better surveillance, so we can create locally targeted prevention strategies, but also for improvements to acute care and rehabilitation infrastructure.”
“Our efforts through the Global Coalition for TBI make this goal possible. Recently in 2022, the World Health Organization created a global action plan for epilepsy and other neurological disorders, focussing attention on neurological conditions. With this as a base, there is a clearer path for us to advocate for TBI to be recognised as a global public health priority.”
Annually, an estimated 69 million people worldwide sustain a TBI, making it the leading cause of death and disability in people younger than 40 years – it exceeds the combined global burden of HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria combined.
In tandem, 89% of TBI cases worldwide occur in low and middle-income countries, and the incidence is rising sharply, driven by rising rates of road traffic injuries, violence, conflict-related trauma, and hazards at work.
Between 2015 and 2030, TBI is projected to cost low- and middle-income countries more than US$1·1 trillion in lost productivity, lost wages, disability, and premature death.
But despite being such a major global health issue TBI has remained largely absent from international health policy and financing. The WHO and most of its member states have yet to formally classify TBI as a chronic condition or to include it in surveillance systems.
The Global Coalition for TBI, representing hundreds of organisations spanning clinical leaders, researchers, policy makers, people with lived experience, and member states, has coalesced behind a unified call for change. They are campaigning for TBI to be formerly adopted as a notifiable and chronic condition in a proposed resolution the World Health Assembly in 2027.
The campaign is ongoing. The Global Coalition for TBI are hosting an event at the 2026 World Health Assembly in Geneva this week, setting down the path to make their case by next year.
Professors Peter Hutchinson (Cambridge) and Tony Figaji (Cape Town) are co-leads of the NIHR Global Health Research Group on Acquired Brain and Spine Injury (ABSI).
Professor Hutchinson said: "This work is part of the portfolio of the NIHR ABSI group funded by the UK Government National Institute of Health and Social Care Research and led by the Academic Division of Neurosurgery at the University of Cambridge and Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Cape Town.”
“We worked closely with our global colleagues particularly Prof Tariq Khan and Dr Almas Khattak from Pakistan, who have been leading the Global Coalition for TBI’s efforts.”
“The group aims to improve the prevention, investigation and treatment of patients with traumatic brain injury which is responsible for many of the 11000 deaths from trauma per day globally. We have created a registry- GEO-TBI - to map traumatic brain injury, developed pathways to improve care, created new technology in collaboration with the NIHR Brain Injury HealthTech Research Centre and helped train a new generation of health care professionals including neurosurgeons.”
Read the paper: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(26)00063-X/fulltext
Time to confront the global health crisis hidden in plain sight: why traumatic brain injury belongs on the global health agenda, Lancet Glob Health 2026; 14: 103933. Lead authors: Sara Venturini, National Institute for Health and Care Research Global Health Research Group on Acquired Brain and Spine Injury, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge, and Kathyrn Hendrick, Canadian Traumatic Brain Injury Research Consortium, Canada
