Critical care and severe sepsis in resource poor settings

There have been impressive gains in public health in low- and middle-income countries in recent decades, which are contribut-ing to significant reductions in infant mortality, malaria attribut-able mortality and a general improvement in life expectancy in these countries. With basic public health needs better addressed, improvements in curative care, in particular for the critically ill, are becoming more important for saving lives. The recent and con-tinuing outbreaks of severe acute respiratory infections due to emerging infections give further political and media attention to critical care. Increased awareness of the importance of critical care is reflected in an increase in availability of dedicated intensive care units (ICUs) in low-middle-income andmiddle-income coun-tries. However, with the scarce data available, it appears that severity adjusted case fatality in ICUs in these settings remains much higher than in higher income countries.3,4 Improving thes