Kathryn Maitland is a Professor of Tropical Paediatric Infectious Diseases at Imperial College, London who has been based full-time for the last 15 years in East Africa, where she leads a research group whose major research portfolio includes severe malaria, bacterial sepsis and severe malnutrition in children and clinical trials in emergency care. Her team conducted the largest trial in critically children ever undertaken in Africa (FEAST trial) examining fluid resuscitation strategies in children with severe febrile illness, showing that fluid boluses increased mortality. She subsequently received two new trial grant awards. The TRACT trial will investigate transfusion and other treatment strategies in 3800 African children severe life-threatening anaemia (ISRCTN84086586). The COAST trial (Children Oxygenation Administration Strategies Trial) will examine the optimum oxygen saturation threshold for which oxygen should be targeted and how best to administer oxygen, by high flow or low flow, in 4800 severely ill African children.