Sepsis affects approximately 50 million people worldwide each year and is responsible for an estimated 11 million deaths. Africa bears a disproportionate share of this burden, compounded by limited access to diagnostics, effective antimicobials, and critical care resources. High rates of infections caused by antimicobial-resistant pathogens further exacerbate the challenge. Most international sepsis guidelines are derived from high-income settings and are often difficult to implement safely in resource-limited environments. Improving sepsis recognition and management in Africa is therefore an urgent priority and a central focus of ongoing GHIDA projects.

Regional factors must also be considered, including pathogen distribution and environmental conditions. As demonstrated in one of our studies, high altitude (app. 2400 m, as in Asella) significantly affects the performance of standard sepsis scores, as physiological reference ranges for parameters such as  respiratory rate and oxygen saturation differ from those at sea level. 

Current projects focus on developing context-adapted and innovative diagnostic approaches, including the adaption of clinical sepsis scores for local use, strengthening culture-based microbiological diagnostics, and integrating molecular methods such as detection of genetic resistance markers and next-generation sequencing (NGS) to improve pathogen identification and clinical decision-making.