Richard Stead, CEO of Qures, proposes a new approach to sepsis care in Africa designed to give clinicians more time to identify the cause of infection and deliver the treatment most likely to work. Sepsis can move faster than medicine. A critically ill patient can deteriorate from infection to shock, organ dysfunction and death while clinicians are still trying to establish what is wrong, identify the cause and determine which treatment is most likely to work. This presents a particular challenge for sepsis in Africa, where healthcare facilities can face limited laboratory capacity, shortages of critical-care beds, restricted access to oxygen and difficulties transferring patients to specialist centres. The response to sepsis has traditionally focused on recognising infection quickly and starting empirical antimicrobial treatment. That remains essential. But as antimicrobial resistance increases, the first treatment selected may not always be effective, while laboratory testing can take time to establish the organism responsible and its antimicrobial susceptibility. This creates a critical gap. A proposed new funding priority, known as The First 24 Hours of Sepsis, argues …