By Ken Muthomi - Reporter
Kenya, July 13, 2026 - While fewer young children are developing malaria-related severe anaemia, more school-aged children are being admitted to hospital with the illness, a new study by the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme has found.
The 26-year study found that children aged 5–14 years accounted for an increasingly larger share of severe anaemia admissions, with their proportion rising from 16.4% during the high malaria transmission period (1998–2003) to 44.7% during the low malaria transmission era (2010–2024).
The researchers tracked more than 84,000 paediatric admissions at Kilifi County Hospital, involving children aged between 1 month and 14 years.
Severe anaemia is a life-threatening condition in which the body has dangerously low levels of haemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body.
Common symptoms of the disease include extreme tiredness or weakness, pale skin, rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath, dizziness, headaches and poor feeding.
While malaria remains a leading cause of severe anaemia, malnutrition, sickle cell disease, HIV infection and bacterial bloodstream infections are increasingly contributing to the condition among children.
“The prevalence of severe anaemia remains unacceptably high globally, and progress to meet global targets remains suboptimal. In our setting, the aetiology of severe anaemia is multifactorial, and the burden of severe anaemia has shifted from younger children to older age groups over time,” the researchers wrote.
“This trend might be partly attributed to the declining prevalence of malaria, which predominantly causes severe anaemia in children younger than 5 years in endemic areas.”
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Children with severe anaemia were more likely to die in hospital than those with mild or no anaemia, according to the study. Hospital mortality increased from 4.3% among children with mild or no anaemia to 7.8% among those with severe anaemia.
Furthermore, the researchers also found stronger links between severe anaemia and invasive bacterial infections caused by organisms such as non-typhoidal Salmonella, Escherichia coli, Haemophilus influenzae and Streptococcus pneumoniae.
The study, published in The Lancet Global Health, is titled ‘Severe anaemia and invasive bacterial infections in Kenyan children: a 26-year hospital surveillance observational study.’
The researchers have now called for an expansion of health interventions, which have traditionally focused on malaria and children under five, to older school-going children.
They also called for improved clinical management of severe anaemia, including early evaluation for bacterial infections, prompt antibiotic treatment where appropriate, and closer monitoring of high-risk patients.