A report on the WHO working group on Parkinson's disease.

In order to raise awareness of the public health importance of Parkinson's disease, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has recently established a Working Group on Parkinson's Disease and included it in the framework of the WHO Global Initiative on Neurology and Public Health. The first meeting of this international expert group produced a set of recommendations covering the following aspects of Parkinson's disease: epidemiology; organisation of services and treatment; education, training and information, and direct and indirect costs of care. An independent international research project entitled Global Parkinson's Disease Survey has recently been launched in response to the recommendations of the WHO Working Group on Parkinson's Disease. This paper summarises the recommendations of this WHO Working Group and outlines objectives, methods and preliminary pilot results of the Global Parkinson's Disease Survey.