Prevalence of autism: According to the World Health Organization, 1 in 160 kids across the world has autism spectrum disorder.
Researchers from PGI Chandigarh conducted various studies in January 2019 to determine the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in India. Their report was published in the November 2019 issue of Neurology India. According to them, the scarcity of high‑quality population‑based epidemiological studies on ASD in India highlights an urgent need to study the burden of ASD in India. The availability of such data would enable the country to develop a better support system for those on the spectrum, they said.
The research was based on pooling numbers from preexisting studies that were conducted to arrive at a number of people in the country that have ASD in any form. In their introduction they said that considering the population of India and that one-third of the Indian population is kids below 15 years of age, there may be more than 2 million Indians affected by ASD.
The team screened 195 studies, four of which were selected to be included in their research as they were based in the community setting rather than being hospital-based studies.
