When Four Out of Five Don’t Have to Die: Inside Africa’s Preventable Child Mortality Crisis

By Waihiga K. Muturi, Rtn.

On June 16, 2024, Mama Baraka’s life changed forever. Her 4-year-old son, Brylejones Baraka, lost his battle for life after a long fight with post-transplant complications. A liver donor herself, she had hoped, prayed, and given everything to save her child. But in the end, her heartbreaking TikTok videos — now viewed over half a million times — became a digital shrine to a life cut tragically short.

Baraka’s death was not just a family’s private pain , it’s a public tragedy reflective of a broader crisis: Africa’s staggering and largely preventable child mortality rate.

A groundbreaking study by the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance (CHAMPS) Network, operating under Kenya’s KEMRI, reveals that more than 86.9 percent of child deaths in Sub-Saharan Africa involve infections, and over 82 percent of those deaths are preventable.

“We’re not looking at an insurmountable crisis,” says Dr. Victor Akelo, CHAMPS Senior Director and KEMRI official. “We’re staring at a solvable problem that demands urgent, coordinated action.”

CHAMPS introduced Minimally Invasive Tissue Sampling (MITS) — a more culturally accepted diagnostic tool that uses needle-based biopsies instead of full autopsies — to examine over 600 post-neonatal deaths across Africa and South Asia. The results? A stunning correlation between child mortality and infectious diseases, most of which are preventable with timely, accessible interventions.

The leading killers include malnutrition, malaria, HIV, lower respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, and congenital defects. But within hospitals themselves, another silent killer is at play — nosocomial infections like Klebsiella pneumoniae and Acinetobacter baumannii, which thrive in under-sanitized clinical settings.
“Some of these infections are acquired right in our hospitals,” warns Dr. Akelo. “We must embed infection prevention and control into the DNA of our health facilities.”

Paediatricians like Dr. Isaac Kihurani of Aga Khan University Hospital and Dr. Aura Nzinga are the daily witnesses of this tragedy — and sometimes, the last hands to hold a dying child.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Dr. Nzinga says. “Especially when the death was preventable. We debrief, we reflect, we analyse what went wrong — because every child’s death teaches us something.”

She and Dr. Kihurani emphasize early warning signs — like fever in malaria or convulsions in HIV-exposed children — and the importance of maternal screening, delivery precautions, and postnatal care in curbing vertical transmission of diseases like HIV.

Kenya has made strides. Insecticide-treated nets, malaria prophylaxis for pregnant women, and routine immunization have lowered some infection rates. Promising malaria vaccine rollouts are beginning in high-burden counties like Siaya. But gaps remain — especially in rural and underserved communities.

What Dr. Akelo’s study has done is more than diagnose the crisis — it’s handed governments a roadmap to action.

But, as he puts it, “roadmaps are worthless without travellers.”

The research data has been shared with national and county governments. But implementation lags amid bureaucracy, budget constraints, and weak health infrastructure.

The big questions remain:

When will infection control protocols become standard across all hospitals?

How can interventions reach deep into rural counties where the crisis is worst?

And how fast can political will turn research into results?

“The tragedy of Baraka is not just one family’s loss — it’s a wake-up call,” says Dr. Akelo. “Every preventable death is an indictment of a system that failed.”