09 September 2026

Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) and neonatal health crises have escalated into critical public health emergencies across Bangladesh, threatening national healthcare infrastructure and standard of living. Driven by the unregulated use of antibiotics, severe diagnostic bottlenecks, poor hospital hygiene, and environmental contamination, multidrug-resistant superbugs are now primary contributors to rising child mortality.

Evaluating sepsis risk scores in paediatric care

Paediatric sepsis remains a leading cause of child mortality across Bangladesh. A separate observational study focused on children admitted with active sepsis to a tertiary hospital in Dhaka revealed an in-hospital mortality rate of approximately 23%. Although this research focused on older paediatric cohorts (aged two months to 18 years), evaluating international organ dysfunction scoring systems like PELOD-2, pSOFA, and the Phoenix Sepsis Score provides vital insights into optimising early critical care management, which can systematically inform and strengthen risk stratification frameworks for vulnerable newborns. The results demonstrated that all three scoring methods had high predictive accuracy. Among them, pSOFA and PELOD-2 provided the most precise discrimination of mortality risk, yielding Area Under the Curve (AUC) values of 0.83 and 0.82, respectively. 

The write-up is a part of Without Borders Media Fellowship by MSF-GARDP Grant on Antimicrobial Resistance, which encourages independent, impartial, and neutral reporting on health and humanitarian crises.