Invasive Salmonella infections in sub-Saharan Africa are a major cause of child illness and deaths, a new body of research into this usually overlooked infectious disease has revealed.

In the West, Salmonella is commonly thought of as a bacterium responsible for relatively harmless cases of food poisoning. However, a supplement to the leading infectious diseases journal Clinical Infectious Diseases published recently exposes the unacceptable toll of sickness and death caused by invasive Salmonella infections in sub-Saharan Africa.