Sepsis, the body's life-threatening reaction to an infection, was involved in almost a third of all deaths worldwide in 2021, and much of it could be prevented or treated in time.
Written from the sources listed below, not independently peer-reviewed.
Out of every 100 deaths worldwide in 2021, roughly how many were related to sepsis?
21.4 million
Sepsis-related deaths
Modelled estimate (uncertainty range 20.3 to 22.5 million), equal to 31.5% of all deaths worldwide. The total had fallen to 14.1 million in 2019 before rising during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Data year 2021. Source: GBD 2021 Global Sepsis Collaborators, The Lancet Global Health 13(12), open-access copy, 2025
166 million
Sepsis cases
Modelled estimate (uncertainty range 135 to 201 million), 30% more than in 2019. It uses a broader definition than the estimate published in 2020, which put cases at 48.9 million.
Data year 2021. Source: GBD 2021 Global Sepsis Collaborators, The Lancet Global Health 13(12), open-access copy, 2025
967,000
Newborn deaths related to sepsis
Babies in their first 28 days of life (uncertainty range 770,000 to 1.21 million), down from 2.17 million in 1990.
Data year 2021. Source: GBD 2021 Global Sepsis Collaborators, The Lancet Global Health 13(12), open-access copy, 2025
Unit: million deaths
Modelled GBD estimates of all-cause sepsis-related deaths for the three years named in the study's text; years in between are not plotted. Deaths fell slowly for three decades, driven by fewer deaths among children, then rose sharply in 2020–2021, a reversal the authors link to the COVID-19 pandemic. No newer global estimate was available in October 2026.
The SDGs have no target for sepsis itself; in 2017 the World Health Assembly asked countries to improve its prevention, diagnosis and treatment (resolution WHA70.7). The nearest measurable goal concerns infection prevention: WHO's global action plan aims for more than 90% of countries to meet the minimum requirements for infection prevention and control by 2030, but in 2023–2024 only 6% did, although 71% had an active programme.
Sub-Saharan Africa had the highest sepsis-related death rate in 2021, at about 457 deaths per 100,000 people, and an estimated 58.5% of all deaths in the region involved sepsis.
Source: GBD 2021 Global Sepsis Collaborators, The Lancet Global Health 13(12), open-access copy, 2025People aged 70 and older accounted for the largest number of sepsis-related deaths in 2021, an estimated 9.28 million. Among people aged 15 and older, sepsis mortality rose by 26% between 1990 and 2021.
Source: GBD 2021 Global Sepsis Collaborators, The Lancet Global Health 13(12), open-access copy, 2025In the estimate WHO published in 2020, almost half of all sepsis cases, about 20 million, occurred in children under five, and rates were highest in lower-middle-income countries.
Source: World Health Organization, 2024Patients in low- and middle-income countries face up to 20 times the risk of catching an infection while receiving health care that patients in high-income countries face.
Source: World Health Organization, 2024Each country is shaded by its latest available value, so you can see where the gap is widest. Hover or tap a country, search for one, or open the full table.
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Values in % of all deaths.
There is no open country dataset on sepsis, so this map uses a proxy: WHO's estimate of the share of all deaths caused by communicable diseases together with maternal, perinatal and nutritional conditions, the group of causes behind most sepsis deaths. It is not a count of sepsis. All values are modelled for 2021, when COVID-19 deaths likely raise the share in hard-hit countries; it is a share, so countries with many deaths from chronic disease look lighter even if infections remain common.
Source: WHO Global Health Estimates, via World Bank Open Data. Latest year available per country; years differ.
Values load from World Bank Open Data. Simplified Natural Earth borders; they imply no position on disputed territories.
Instead of one “percent solved” score, DO GOOD rates three separate dimensions. A problem can have mature solutions that still reach too few people. These ratings are an editorial reading of the sources on this page, not a measured index.
Has the situation improved in the real world?
LowSepsis-related deaths among newborns fell from 2.17 million in 1990 to 967,000 in 2021. But total deaths, after falling to 14.1 million in 2019, rose to 21.4 million in 2021, more than in 1990, and the death rate among adults has increased.
How mature and validated are the available solutions?
ModeratePrevention through vaccination, clean water, hygiene and infection control in health facilities is well established, and early antibiotics and fluids are the standard treatment. But a global WHO guideline on sepsis care was still being developed after 2024, and newer antibiotic combinations for newborns in places with high resistance are only in trials.
How widely are effective solutions actually used?
LowOnly 6% of countries met all of WHO's minimum requirements for infection prevention and control in 2023–2024, and nearly a quarter reported shortages of personal protective equipment in 2023.
Most of the detailed data behind global estimates come from a few high-income countries, and the authors say the burden in low- and middle-income countries may be underestimated. The 2021 estimate of 21.4 million deaths also uses a broader definition than the 2020 publication, which put deaths at 11 million, so the two cannot be compared directly.
Sepsis among children declined steadily until 2019, but deaths rose in 2020–2021 and are increasingly linked to chronic disease in older adults. Antibiotic resistance, which makes sepsis harder to treat, rose in over 40% of monitored pathogen and antibiotic combinations between 2018 and 2023.
Sepsis happens when the body's response to an infection goes wrong and starts to damage its own organs. Any infection can lead to it, whether it begins in the lungs, the urinary tract, the gut or the bloodstream, and it can also follow severe injury or complicate a long-term illness. Common signs include fever, a fast heartbeat, rapid breathing, confusion and pain; small children may stop feeding, vomit often or stop passing urine. Treatment works best when it starts early, but many infections are not recognised as sepsis until organs are already failing. The most recent global estimate counts 166 million cases and 21.4 million sepsis-related deaths in 2021, about 31.5% of all deaths that year.
The burden is heaviest where infections are common and health care is hardest to reach. Sub-Saharan Africa had the highest sepsis death rate in 2021, newborns remain highly exposed, and about 967,000 newborn babies died from sepsis-related causes that year. At the same time, more and more sepsis deaths occur among older adults living with stroke, lung disease or other chronic conditions. Sepsis also often starts in hospitals and clinics: an estimated 15 of every 1,000 hospitalised patients develop it as a complication of care. Rising antibiotic resistance makes the infections behind sepsis harder to treat, especially in newborn units.
Sepsis is a syndrome rather than a single disease, and death certificates usually record the infection or the underlying illness instead. Global estimates therefore have to reconstruct it from several data sources:
The clinical definition
Under the international Sepsis-3 consensus definition, sepsis is life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by a dysregulated response of the body to infection. An infection alone, without organ damage, is not sepsis.
Sepsis-related deaths
The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study estimates what share of deaths from 195 underlying causes and 22 infectious syndromes involved sepsis, using death records that list several causes, hospital records and tissue-sampling studies. The 2021 estimate also counts implied sepsis, where an infection and organ failure are recorded together.
Sepsis cases
The number of cases is not counted directly. It is derived from case fatality rates modelled on about 250 million hospital admissions, combined with the estimated number of deaths, and comes with a wide uncertainty range.
Health care-associated sepsis
Sepsis that develops as a complication of receiving health care, for example after surgery or from an infection picked up in hospital. WHO estimates that 15 of every 1,000 hospitalised patients develop it.
What works
Hand hygiene, clean equipment, safe water and sanitation, and well-run infection control programmes stop many infections that patients pick up during care. WHO estimates that infection prevention at the point of care could avert up to 821,000 deaths a year by 2050.
Limits
Only 6% of countries met all minimum requirements in 2023–2024, and nearly a quarter of countries reported shortages of personal protective equipment in 2023.
What works
Most sepsis starts with an infection that can often be avoided: through recommended vaccines, clean water and sanitation, handwashing, safe food preparation, a healthy diet and breastfeeding for newborns.
Limits
These measures depend on investment well beyond health services, and gaps in water, sanitation and vaccination are widest where sepsis rates are highest.
What works
Treatment is most effective when it starts early: antimicrobials suited to the likely infection, intravenous fluids, and medicines to raise blood pressure when needed, together with finding and dealing with the source of the infection.
Limits
The warning signs, such as fever, fast breathing and confusion, are shared with many other illnesses, so sepsis is easily missed, and many people cannot reach a facility able to give intravenous treatment quickly.
What works
Better survival and health among children drove the fall in sepsis incidence between 1990 and 2019. Sepsis-related deaths among newborns fell by more than half, from 2.17 million in 1990 to 967,000 in 2021.
Limits
Nearly a million newborns still die from sepsis-related causes each year, and resistant bacteria such as Klebsiella pneumoniae are common in newborn units in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
What works
Prescribing antibiotics only when needed, and choosing the right drug and dose, slows the spread of resistance so that first-line treatments keep working for people with sepsis.
Limits
Resistance is already widespread: in 2023 about one in six laboratory-confirmed bacterial infections worldwide were resistant, and more than 70% of two common bacteria causing bloodstream infections in the African Region resisted a key class of first-choice antibiotics.
Promising, but not proven at scale. The stage shows how far each approach has come; it is not a recommendation.
The NeoSep1 trial is testing new combinations of existing antibiotics for babies with suspected sepsis in places where resistance is common. The first part, with 65 newborns in Kenya and South Africa, found the combinations safe and well tolerated; a second part that began in 2025 aims to enrol up to 3,000 newborns in nine countries by 2028 to find out which regimens work best.
Responding to the 2017 World Health Assembly resolution, WHO has been developing global guidelines on early recognition, initial resuscitation and early treatment of sepsis, with tools to help countries set up national sepsis programmes for adults and children. A draft was opened for public comment in early 2024; WHO's page gives no date for the final guideline.
Because a growing share of sepsis deaths occurs in people with stroke, lung disease, diabetes or heart disease, the authors of the latest global estimate suggest combining the management of chronic disease with infection prevention. How to do this in practice, and what it would achieve, has not yet been tested at scale.
Implementation gap
Only 6% of countries met all minimum requirements for infection prevention and control in 2023–2024, and nearly a quarter reported shortages of personal protective equipment in 2023. Patients in low- and middle-income countries face up to 20 times the infection risk.
Technology gap
In 2023 more than 40% of E. coli and more than 55% of K. pneumoniae, two leading causes of bloodstream infections that often lead to sepsis, were resistant to third-generation cephalosporins. Resistance was highest in South-East Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean, at one in three infections.
Knowledge gap
The detailed records behind global sepsis estimates come mainly from high-income countries, so the burden elsewhere may be underestimated, and 48% of countries did not report to WHO's antibiotic resistance surveillance system in 2023.
Implementation gap
Sepsis has no single, simple sign: fever, fast breathing, confusion or poor feeding in babies can point to many illnesses. Without trained staff and basic monitoring, the window in which early treatment works best is often missed.
Coordination gap
Sepsis is the end point of many different diseases, from pneumonia and malaria to stroke and COVID-19, so no single disease programme owns it. WHO has been asked to support countries in building national sepsis programmes, but its first global clinical guideline was still in development after 2024.
Coordination gap
People aged 70 and older accounted for an estimated 9.28 million sepsis-related deaths in 2021, and stroke was linked to the largest increase in sepsis deaths since 1990. Preventing these deaths requires chronic disease care and infection prevention to work together.
Unresolved questions, not vetted breakthroughs. Answering any of them would change what is possible.
Most detailed data come from high-income countries. How many people develop and die from sepsis in places with little death registration and few laboratories, and how can routine data systems capture it?
First-line treatments are failing against common resistant bacteria in many newborn units. Which affordable combinations reduce deaths, and how can they be used without speeding up further resistance?
Could simple bedside tests, scoring rules or electronic alerts help health workers spot sepsis early in clinics with few staff, without leading to more unnecessary antibiotic use?
Sepsis deaths rose sharply in 2020–2021. Did they fall back once the COVID-19 pandemic eased, or is the shift towards older adults with chronic disease driving a lasting increase?
Fever, a fast heartbeat, rapid breathing, confusion or severe pain during an infection, or poor feeding, vomiting and lack of urine in a small child, are reasons to seek medical care straight away and to ask whether it could be sepsis.
Keep up with recommended vaccines, wash your hands, prepare food safely and look after wounds. If you are caring for someone in hospital, it is reasonable to ask staff to clean their hands.
Do not ask for antibiotics for colds or flu, do not share or keep leftover antibiotics, and take them as your health worker instructs, so that they keep working for people with serious infections.
Organisations that bring clean water, hygiene and trained staff to clinics and maternity units, or that fund research on sepsis, depend on donations. Look for groups that publish independent evaluations before you give.
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GBD 2021 Global Sepsis Collaborators, The Lancet Global Health 13(12), open-access copy, published 2025
Peer-reviewed Global Burden of Disease analysis published online 21 October 2025 (CC BY 4.0). Source of the 2021 estimates of cases (166 million) and sepsis-related deaths (21.4 million, 31.5% of all deaths), the 1990 and 2019 death totals, the 30% rise in cases since 2019, newborn deaths, deaths among people aged 70 and older, regional rates, the role of chronic disease and COVID-19, the Sepsis-3 definition, methods and data limitations.
World Health Organization (3 May 2024), published 2024
WHO's overview of sepsis. Source of the warning signs, at-risk groups, prevention measures, treatment principles, the estimate published in 2020 (48.9 million cases, 11 million deaths, about 20 million cases in children under five), health care-associated sepsis (15 per 1,000 hospitalised patients) and resolution WHA70.7.
World Health Organization (news release, 29 November 2024), published 2024
WHO's release on the Global report on infection prevention and control 2024. Source of the share of countries with an active programme (71%) and meeting all minimum requirements (6%), the 2030 target of more than 90%, the up to 20-fold higher infection risk in low- and middle-income countries, PPE shortages, and the modelled 821,000 deaths a year that infection prevention could avert by 2050.
World Health Organization (news release, 13 October 2025), published 2025
Release on the Global antibiotic resistance surveillance report 2025 (GLASS), with 2023 data from 104 countries. Source of the one-in-six share of resistant infections, regional differences, resistance of E. coli and K. pneumoniae to third-generation cephalosporins, the link between bloodstream infections and sepsis, rising trends since 2018 and the 48% of countries not reporting.
UCL Institute for Clinical Trials and Methodology (22 January 2026), published 2026
Update from the trial unit running NeoSep1 with GARDP. Source of the Part 1 results (65 newborns in Kenya and South Africa), the Part 2 plan (up to 3,000 newborns in nine countries by 2028) and the note that resistant bacteria such as Klebsiella pneumoniae are common in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia.
World Health Organization (departmental update, 30 January 2024), published 2024
WHO announcement of its global guideline on sepsis care, covering early recognition, initial resuscitation and early treatment and support for national sepsis programmes, with public comments due in March 2024. No date for the final guideline is given.
DO GOOD International (2026). Stopping Deaths from Sepsis. Global Challenges. Updated October 15, 2026. https://www.dogood.world/challenges/sepsis
For figures, please cite the original sources listed above.