Adrian Holloway, MD, Assistant Professor, Pediatrics, UM School of Medicine

Adnan Bhutta, MBBS, Professor, Pediatrics, UM School of Medicine

More than 90% of the global 6.4 million deaths in children under 14 years occur in resource-limited settings. Most of these deaths occur as a result of acute illnesses such as sepsis, pneumonia, or trauma, yet critical care services are not universally available.

A significant number of these lives could be saved by proven, simple critical care and supportive interventions despite challenging environments and fewer pediatric available critical care resources. However, without region-specific data that captures the burden of disease, outcomes, and resource utilization of pediatric populations in resource-limited settings, we cannot develop context-appropriate, evidence-based interventions, or appropriately allocate limited but available resources to hospitals.

We propose to undertake a prospective, observational, multicenter, multinational point prevalence study to measure the burden of acute pediatric critical illness in LMIC’s. Our proposed project is a crucial first step in setting future research and health delivery priorities for LMIC’s.