India opens BRICS 2026 health agenda with focus on healthy lifestyles, mental wellness
India has put healthy lifestyles and mental wellness at the heart of BRICS health cooperation for 2026, introducing them as new priority areas at the first BRICS Health Working Group (HWG) meeting in New Delhi. The move signals a shift toward preventive, people‑centric healthcare while maintaining emphasis on infectious diseases, digital health and equitable access to medicines.
Opening its 2026 chairship, India outlined two proposals: a BRICS Mission for Healthy Lifestyles focused on cutting risk factors such as unhealthy diets, physical inactivity, tobacco use and harmful alcohol consumption—key drivers of non‑communicable diseases including heart disease and diabetes—and a plan to promote mental health and wellness by strengthening services, reducing stigma and integrating mental healthcare into broader public systems.
The agenda was presented in the context of a BRICS framework described as expanded to include countries such as Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia. Union Health Secretary Punya Salila Srivastava said the HWG is a key platform for public‑health cooperation as countries face a dual burden of communicable and non‑communicable diseases.
Under India’s leadership, the 2026 theme—“Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability”—aims to support inclusive, adaptable and future‑ready health systems. Officials emphasized inclusive, evidence‑driven and sustainable collaboration that respects the diverse health systems and socio‑economic realities across BRICS members.
According to the meeting’s discussions, the HWG will focus on evidence‑based policymaking, mutual learning and building resilient systems capable of responding to future pandemics and crises.
Srivastava noted that past BRICS efforts have contributed to tackling communicable and non‑communicable diseases, improving access to affordable medicines, advancing pandemic preparedness and promoting health technology innovation and universal health coverage.
Priorities highlighted included joint research and development, equitable access to vaccines and medicines and capacity‑building across nations. Participants and global experts welcomed India’s agenda and called for deeper cooperation in areas such as tuberculosis control, digital health and local production of medicines and vaccines.
With the new priorities on healthy lifestyles and mental wellness, India’s chairship will seek to steer BRICS health work toward prevention while continuing established initiatives on infectious disease control, digital health and equitable access.