A senior Specialist with the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi, Dr (Med) John Adabie Appiah, has called on African countries to pay more attention to sepsis and find ways of combating it.

He said though the condition has been with humanity for a while, there was very little data on it, particularly in Africa and for that matter Ghana.

Sepsis is a life-threatening condition that arises when the body's response to an infection causes injury to its own tissues and organs. It can affect anyone, but people who are older, very young, pregnant or have other health problems are at higher risk.

Dr Appiah, a Critical Care Physician, made the call during a public engagement on the Sub-Saharan Consortium for the Advancement of Innovative Research and Care in Sepsis (STAIRS) in Kumasi.

STAIRS is a regional initiative aimed at conducting high-quality research to address critical knowledge gaps in the epidemiology, diagnosis and quality care of patients hospitalised with Sepsis in resource-constrained settings of the region.

It is also to strengthen the research capacity of the participating institutions and to translate emerging evidence to policies.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that over 50 million people are infected with Sepsis every year and more than 11 million people die from sepsis annually, majority of whom are found in low and middle-income countries including Ghana.

Dr Appiah said the deadly nature of this condition, therefore, called for urgent actions to delve deeper for workable solutions.

Even though some research on sepsis was ongoing on the continent, he said it was very minimal to guide policies.

He said for health practitioners to understand the extent to which people were suffering and dying from sepsis, they needed to start documenting in order to reliably inform policymakers, hospital managers to put resources into managing sepsis and also come out with protocols for its treatment.

Engagement

Dr Appiah, who is also the Principal Investigator of STAIRS at KATH, said researchers from seven African countries and other partners from across the globe would conduct several studies to understand the disease in synergy with additional work packages focused on sepsis-specific outputs in capacity building, networking and policy engagement.

“Our health system is too weak to handle sepsis. Treating sepsis requires resources to manage the organ which is failing – we need machines that can help sustain the person’s life till drugs are administered,” he said.

The other African countries taking part in the research are Uganda, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.

STAIRS is a five-year project which started two years ago and it is being funded by the Research Networks for Health Innovations in Sub-Saharan Africa (RHISSA) and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany.

The participating German institutions are the University of Dusseldorf and Charite Hospital, Berlin.