New study of critically ill patients in Africa finds that lives could be saved with improvements to hospitals’ emergency and critical care treatments

10 March 2025

In the first epidemiological study of critical illness across Africa, Professor Rupert Pearse, NIHR Professor of Intensive Care Medicine from Queen Mary’s William Harvey Research Institute, and an international group of colleagues examined the records of almost 20,000 patients from 180 hospitals in 22 African countries or territories. The study found that 1 in 8 patients in hospitals in Africa are critically ill, and of these, 1 in 5 dies within 7 days.  

Researchers also catalogued the resources available within each hospital for essential emergency and critical care (EECC) – which include equipment, consumables, drugs, human resources, training, guidelines, and infrastructure - and found that only 7.5% had all the resources available. The majority of critically ill patients were cared for in general wards, rather than in intensive care units or high care units. 

Professor Pearse said: “This study was unique in that it did not rely on each patient’s diagnosis to determine whether they should be receiving essential critical care, but instead every patient in the participating hospitals was assessed by a clinician investigator. As a result, this study provides robustly generalisable data describing the prevalence, care provision, and patient outcomes for critical illness in Africa, informing health policy across the continent.” He went on: “Critical illness has been neglected in healthcare policy for the global south, and improving the care of critically ill patients has the potential to save many lives from acute diseases of every type.” 

‘The African Critical Illness Outcomes Study (ACIOS): a point prevalence study of critical illness in 22 nations in Africa’ is published in The Lancet.