Sepsis affects approximately 50 million individuals globally each year, resulting in around 11 million deaths. Africa experiences a disproportionate burden, compounded by limited diagnostic and therapeutic resources. High rates of infections with resistant bacteria and restricted access to effective antibiotics further exacerbate the challenge. Most international guidelines for sepsis recognition and management originate from high-income countries and are frequently difficult or unsafe to implement in low-resource settings. Consequently, improving sepsis care in Africa is an urgent priority and a central focus of several ongoing projects.

Regional factors must also be considered, including pathogen distribution and environmental influences. As demonstrated in one of our studies, altitude (approximately 2400 m, whereas HITM is located) affects the performance of standard sepsis scores, as normal ranges for vital signs such as respiratory rate and oxygen saturation differ significantly at high elevation.

Ongoing projects focus on developing tailored and innovative diagnostic approaches. These initiatives include adapting clinical sepsis scores to the local context to improve early recognition, enhancing culture-based microbiological diagnostics, and incorporating advanced molecular methods such as genetic resistance marker detection and next-generation sequencing (NGS) to improve pathogen identification.