Professor Dr. Dr. Dirk Dressler, head of the Movement Disorders Section at Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany, was invited to give a workshop on botulinum toxin therapy of cervical dystonia at CREST Neuro Conclave 2025 in Delhi, India. The congress was organised by the Consortium for Research Education Social awareness and Training (CREST) and brought together more than 600 neurologists from all over India. ‘It is amazing to see the development of medicine in India in the last decade, with neurology being one of the fastest growing fields. The turning point was clearly the liberalisation of the healthcare market’, explains Dressler. There are now a number of nationwide hospital chains including Medanta, Apollo, Fortis and Narayana, which now operate at international standards and set new benchmarks for healthcare in India. ‘India is on the move. After many decades of political and economic stagnation caused by an unfortunate collaboration with the Soviet Union, the entire country is now rapidly replacing bureaucracy and overregulation with a liberal market economy’, so Dressler.

Continuing his engagements in the South of India, Dressler travelled to Bangalore, the country’s high-tech capital. There, he attended the Karnataka Movement Disorders Society Forum, where he lectured on the botulinum toxin treatment of cervical dystonia. As a very special honour he then delivered the First Dr Uday Muthane Oration entitled ‘Botulinum Toxin Therapy: The First 40 Years and Then?’ Dr Muthane is a world-renown Parkinson’s Expert and the founding father of the South Indian movement disorders community. Professor Dressler was accompanied by Dr Fereshte Adib Saberi, the founder of IAB – Interdisciplinary Working Group for Movement Disorders, based in Hamburg, Germany, further strengthening international collaboration in the field of movement disorders.