Medical oxygen supplementation is essential for treating severe illnesses and plays a critical role in managing life-threatening conditions, especially during the period of increased demand, such as the delta wave of COVID-19. The study aims to evaluate oxygen requirements and production to support effective capacity planning for future health crises.

Cross-sectional quantitative study. Data collection was carried out between 15 March and 19 December 2021.

The study used secondary data from Nepal’s Health Emergency Operation Centre. Regarding medical oxygen production, calculations included oxygen generated from both hospital-based oxygen plants and private companies, using their highest capacities for comparison. These production capacities were then assessed using three levels of efficiency (100%, 80% and 50%), revealing significant gaps when compared against the oxygen requirements of hospitalised COVID-19 patients, as guided by WHO recommendations. The results were communicated in terms of J-size cylinders, alongside average daily COVID-19 hospitalizations. Data was inputted and analysed using Microsoft Excel and presented in numbers and percentage.

The country’s oxygen demand relies largely on the production from private enterprises, with meeting approximately 85.2% of the total requirement. Optimal production ensures that national oxygen needs will be met. The analysis highlighted that at 80% operational efficiency, 90.8% of the hospital’s requirements could be fulfilled. However, if operational efficiency drops to 50%, the fulfilment rate diminishes to 56.7%. The differences in requirement and production of oxygen are consistent across the provinces; however, a huge disparity was notable in Karnali and Sudurpaschim.

Continuous assessment of production capacities in both hospital and private enterprises producing oxygen is necessary to plan and address the gaps.

This study aimed to assess the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) hospitalisation costs and its associated factors on Nepalese households during the second wave of the pandemic, within the context of Nepal’s COVID-19 response.

A cost-descriptive cross-sectional study.

Kathmandu Metropolitan City, Nepal.

We enrolled 306 hospitalised patients.

Telephonic interviews were conducted with COVID-19 patients between May and July 2022. Cost was assessed from a patient’s perspective. We assessed factors associated with the medical cost of COVID-19 treatment services using a generalised linear model with gamma distribution and log link in both bivariable and multivariable models for estimating coefficients and confidence intervals. Data were analysed using STATA version 13, adjusting for the potential confounders: socio-demographic characteristics, type of hospital, intensive care unit (ICU) requirement, lead time to hospital admission and number of days at hospital stay.

The total median cost for hospitalisation was US$ 754.9. The median direct medical, direct non-medical and indirect costs were US$ 624.4, US$ 49.3 and US$ 493.02, respectively. After adjusting for potential confounders, the cost of COVID-19 treatment was 6.9 times higher among those admitted to private hospital (95% CI 5.72 to 8.32, p

The cost of the COVID-19 treatment was beyond the average monthly income of Nepalese, indicating adverse consequences from the financial burden of a household. The direct medical cost was associated with the type of hospital, requirement of ICU, lead time to hospital admission, and length of hospital stay. Therefore, it is urgent to address the issue of high medical expenses, particularly to strengthen the health system’s resilience against unforeseen crises and pandemics.

Poor quality handover instructions prepared by hospital staff have been identified as a key threat to safe discharges. To optimise patient safety, it is important to identify and understand the influences on how discharge documentation is prepared by hospital staff. The aim of this study was to systematically identify and explore important barriers and enablers to the preparation of high-quality discharge documentation by healthcare professionals (HCPs) for primary care teams at patient discharge.

HCPs from different staff groups (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, occupational and physiotherapists) participated in online interviews.

Semistructured interviews informed by the theoretical domains framework (TDF), to identify key influences on the preparation of discharge documentation. Anonymised transcripts were analysed thematically using a combined inductive-deductive approach. Themes were framed as influences on the preparation of discharge documentation. The likely importance of influences was decided through iterative team discussions structured on predetermined criteria. Criteria included whether the influence was an existing enabler, whether beliefs about the influences were expressed voluntarily and how often they were mentioned.

12 HCPs were interviewed (5 junior doctors, 1 advanced nurse practitioner, 2 nurses, 1 occupational therapist, 1 physiotherapist and 2 pharmacists). Of 44 influences identified, 10 were deemed most important in the preparation of discharge documentation, spread across five TDF domains: knowledge (eg, lack of awareness of guidelines), skills (experience of hospital staff), social and professional role and identity (effective team communication), environmental context and resources (eg, software limitations) and social influences (eg, lack of feedback).

This study identified 10 important influences on how discharge documentation is prepared by hospital staff. These influences are potential targets for subsequent interventions to improve the quality of discharge documentation and patient safety during discharge.

Injury to triangular fibrocartilage complex (TFCC) is a common cause of ulnar-sided wrist pain, of which peripheral TFCC tears are amenable to repair. The surgical approaches to treat TFCC tears are well-established, with arthroscopic or arthroscopic-assisted repair as the preferred method. However, the postoperative rehabilitation protocols significantly vary across different studies, ranging from 2 to 9 weeks, often without sufficient justification.

This research is designed to conduct a randomised controlled trial at a single centre with double-blinding to compare the clinical and functional results of two immobilisation protocols of 3 weeks and 6 weeks, following arthroscopic repair of peripheral TFCC tears (ie, Palmar 1B, 1C and 1D) in adults, considering the phase of ligament healing. The hypothesis that there will be no significant difference in outcomes between the two groups is considered. Adults aged 18–60 years of both genders who present with ulnar-sided wrist pain and satisfy the inclusion criteria are included in the study. Following the arthroscopic TFCC repair using the Polydioxanone Suture (PDS) inside-out suture technique, the patients will be immobilised in an above-elbow cast according to their assigned immobilisation groups, which will be determined by a computer-generated 1:1 block randomisation. In this study, each group will have at least 16 participants. The primary outcomes will be evaluated by the weight-bearing press test and the ballottement test. Secondary outcomes, including the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) score, grip strength, pinch strength, foveal sign, Modified Mayo Wrist Score (MMWS), patient-rated wrist/hand evaluation (PRWHE) score and the range of movements in the wrist and forearm, will be assessed and compared across the groups at each point of assessment, with the results subsequently reported in a detailed manner. The study will be reported in accordance with Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) guidelines.

The Ethics Committee of Kasturba Medical College, Manipal, approved the trial (approval No. IEC1 - 386). The data from this trial will be presented at academic conferences and published in peer-reviewed international journals.

This trial has been registered at the Clinical Trial Registry of India (registration number: CTRI/2023/03/050692).

Suicide rates in India are among the highest in the world, with the most recent suicide death rate estimates ranging between 18 and 21 deaths per 100 000 population (compared with the global average of 11/100 000). Responsible media reporting of suicide is one of the few evidence-based population-level suicide prevention interventions. Reports of recent suicides are a routine daily feature in major newspapers in India, and the reporting style carries many concerning features. In 2019, the Press Council of India adopted the WHO media guidelines, yet there has been no investigation as to whether this guidance is being followed. The aim of this paper was to systematically investigate whether the quality of print media reports of suicides has changed since the adoption of media guidelines for suicide reporting in India.

We used content analysis to assess the quality of suicide reporting against WHO guidelines in nine of the most highly read daily newspapers in the southern state of Tamil Nadu between June and December 2016 and June and December 2023. Our analyses of changes in reporting were based on a sample of 1681 print newspaper articles from 2016 and 512 print newspaper articles from 2023. Two-tailed t-tests and proportion tests on aggregate means and frequencies assessed whether the reporting characteristics had changed between 2016 and 2023.

There were small yet statistically discernible reductions in the proportion of articles containing various potentially harmful reporting characteristics, such as articles placed on the front page (4.9–1.8%, p=0.002) and articles mentioning the suicide method (92.7–86.5%, p

We observed substantial improvements in the reporting quality of some English-language newspapers, with minimal improvements in the quality of reporting in Tamil-language newspapers. The media guidelines in India are supporting the early phases of a culture shift on media reporting of suicide, yet they are just the start of the conversation. Strategies are required to engage and support vernacular language newspapers in India on their reporting of suicide, with media sector leadership as a core component.