Resources

Mental health needs of 252 million young people aged 15-24 years in India are multifaceted and as important as their physical health. While India lacks a comprehensive approach to youth mental health, the COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in an urgency to relook at the approaches and commitment accorded to mental health. Recognizing this, PATH with the support from Fondation Botnar, undertook a thorough process of scoping youth mental health needs, priorities, and preferences, and mapping of the stakeholders, policies, programs, legislations, and digital mental health initiatives across public and private sectors. This spotlight report is developed under the program – Stakeholder-led Advancement of Mental Health of Young People (SAMYP) at PATH and is based on multiple methods including desk review, document analysis, consultations with stakeholders including young people, their parents, teachers, service providers.A Technical Advisory Group comprising multi-disciplinary experts in youth mental health and adolescent health, engagement of young people through workshops, and a Youth Advisory Group comprising of young people with a passion for working to improve youth mental health outcomes from Bhubaneshwar, Mumbai and Lucknow have guided this effort at various stages. The findings will add value to the existing body of knowledge and offers key recommendations to improve promotion of youth mental health in India based on emerging programmatic priorities of governments and stakeholders.

One of the critical actions to improve health outcomes and save lives is to augment the public health system’s capacity to reliably deliver oxygen. The public health systems in India have historically relied on oxygen cylinders to meet the medical oxygen demand. As a result, there were very few trained personnel who understood the complexity of integration and maintenance of newly deployed oxygen systems and knew how to manage them. This training module was developed by PATH to provide training relevant to ITI trainers and biomedical engineers working at national, state, district, and health facilities to understand the operations and maintenance of oxygen or respiratory equipment.

As states in India are rapidly setting up oxygen systems, there is a growing gap between the facilities with newly installed oxygen systems and the availability of accredited laboratories to test and certify the quality of oxygen produced from this equipment and approve them for commissioning and use. This training module developed by PATH provides training relevant to oxygen sample preparation that is critical for medical use.

PATH has created a set of eleven posters or job aids intended to support health care service providers and other personnel involved in the operation and maintenance of medical oxygen equipment, such as oxygen cylinders, oxygen concentrators, pressure swing adsorption (PSA) oxygen generation plants, liquid medical oxygen (LMO) storage tanks, and medical oxygen conversion charts. These job aids provide guidelines on how to operate the equipment and the safety and mitigation measures that need to be adhered to when dealing with medical oxygen.

The Training of Trainer (ToT) module on “Basics of Oxygen Management System”, developed by PATH, is meant for providing training to those participants who, by the end of the course, are expected to effectively oversee the oxygen ecosystem at their respective levels. This ToT module is relevant to oxygen program managers at national, state, district, and health facility levels to understand the components of medical oxygen management and use this information for informed decision making.