Currently India has about 500 neurologists and a population of about a billion. In the UK the neurologist to citizen ratio is about 1:90,000 and in US it is 1:26,000. If there is a net increase in 50 neurologists per year in India, it will take more than 20 years to increase the neurologist per patient ratio from its current level of 2 million citizens per neurologist to 50,000 citizens per neurologist In the health care segment, stagnant public spending on health (less than 1 percent of GDP ) places India among the bottom 20 percent of countries. According to the International Association of Agricultural Medicine and Rural Health , nearly 75 % of the health infrastructure, manpower and other medical resources are allocated in the urban areas where only 27 % of the population lives.

The health care scene poses many contradictions because on one hand people die from preventable and curable illnesses while other parts of India have health indicators similar to those of the developed world. Neurological care is scarce in rural areas because primary care practitioners in the villages are not trained to deal with complex conditions. Neurological care is mainly located in tertiary level centers in the cities and in most cases patients do not have the means to travel in order to seek care.

The stigma associated with brain disorders, such as epilepsy prevent people in developing countries from seeking out and receiving treatment. Furthermore, this may result in the loss of educational and social opportunities for those afflicted with these diseases. Another reason for the lack of care in rural India is that physicians, even those who are trained in India are sometimes apprehensive about venturing out into the villages to treat patients. In a country such as India with such a variety of cultural and religious beliefs it could be intimidating to attempt to treat villagers who very well might not want to be examined by doctors due to preconceived notions about allopathic medicine. In the urban areas, the incidence of neurological disease is about 23 per thousand, while in the rural it is about 43 per thousand.