Good Morning Hank It’s Tuesday!
Greetings from Sierra Leone and the Maternal Center of Excellence!
So, Hank, this is the 48,000 square foot maternal and infant care center
currently being built in Sierra Leone these are a few of the women building it;
and this is my crying and sweaty face as it sinks in how many lives
are being helped by our little online community.
But let me back up.
Eight years ago, when Partners in Health began working
with Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Health to strengthen the healthcare system
in Kono district, the maternity ward at Koidu
Government Hospital did not look like this–
overflowing with new moms receiving excellent care
with a functioning operating room and blood bank,
and medical residents training to be the next generation
of Sierra Leonean physicians. No, eight years ago,
it looked like this– dirt floors devoid of patients,
due to a long history of impoverishment, a horrific civil war,
and the collapse of the already-fragile healthcare system during the ebola epidemic.
What’s been accomplished since is remarkable–
Kono was the epicenter of the world’s maternal mortality crisis
with one in seventeen women dying in childbirth or pregnancy.
But that’s changed,
both maternal and child mortality have declined dramatically.
Still the healthcare system in Kono remains inadequate.
There are only 41 maternal beds to serve a population of over 500,000 people
so the maternity ward is perpetually overfull,
and mothers and children in Kono are still dying every day for want
of emergency C-sections, ambulance services,
and drugs to combat postpartum hemorrhage.
It’s simply not acceptable. And also, we don’t have to accept it.
That’s where the Maternal Center of Excellence comes in.
With help from the nearly $40,000,000
raised by Nerdfighteria and PIH over the last three and a half years,
this will be the world-class healthcare center moms and kids deserve in Kono.
Hank, it’s impossible to communicate the scale of this place with a camera,
but footers are being poured, tresses are being welded,
plumbing and wiring is going in, and the first wards will hopefully
open next year.
Isata Dumbaya, the nurse-midwife who leads
maternal health at the hospital, is working closely with
Build Health International engineer John Chew and his team
to make sure that everything is right where it should be.
John, by the way, has a phenomenal Sharpie Hat.
At the Maternal Center of Excellence, there will not only be excellent maternal care,
there will also be two neonatal intensive care units–
one for babies born in the hospital,
another for babies born outside and brought to the hospital.
As well as enough operating theaters and supplies to perform
up to ten emergency C-sections every day.
And the MCOE will also be a teaching hospital
so a new generation of midwives, nurses, and doctors will train there.
We also got to visit the site
where the dormitories and staff housing will be,
and met some kids engaging in the time-honored,
cross-cultural tradition of Young Boys Watching Big Machines.
But it’s not only healthcare workers who are working and being trained
by the MCOE,
as John Chew explained to us, almost all the people working
on the construction site have been trained in new skills,
partly via classes and partly via… get this…educational YouTube videos.
We go to YouTube University on the TV
65% of the construction workers on the site are women.
And I got to chat with three of them– including Hawa,
who was selling corn on the street in Koidu before getting this job,
and who now has become an expert in reading blueprints
and trains new workers on how to use tools.
So I know the skills I’m learning
are not only for today, it’s for tomorrow.
She told me about how profoundly her life has changed but also about
how she feels differently about herself.
Hawa: I’m proud as a woman now.
Anywhere I go people will be proud of me, because they’ve never seen
construction women before.
John: Marie has also been able to learn a highly skilled trade.
Marie: They teach us how to cut [steel] , to weld and now I am a welder.
John: And Success worked as a mason on the site and is now a steelbinder.
She has a theory on why so many women are working at the MCOE:
Sucess: We know that one day we will give birth in this hospital.
Our children will be coming here.
So that’s why we try all effort to build this hospital.
John: But to be clear, Isata and her team aren’t waiting
for the buildings to improve maternal and child health.
More nurses and doctors are already training
at the existing facilities. More community health workers
are being hired to identify high-risk pregnancies via housecall;
and most astonishingly, a special care baby unit
as the hospital has already dramatically reduced child mortality.
The idea is they should always have access to the babies
and be able to feed on demand as needed.
Before we visited the unit. Isata explained to us
that as recently as two years ago, the vast majority of these babies
would’ve died.
The unit is full– so full that at times
the team has to make unspeakably difficult decisions about who they can admit–
but the babies here receive excellent care.
World class care. The kind of care that every baby deserves.
There are many such special care baby units and hospitals
around Sierra Leone, but very few of them are functioning,
because it’s not just about the building and supplying incubators–
it’s also about the staff, the training,
the ongoing supplies needed to run such a unit, maintenance, and so much more.
Because Isata and her team have not just the building and the incubators
but also the support they need to succeed this unit is thriving.
And so, to the thousands of you who donate monthly at pih.org/hankandjohn,
and the thousands more who’ve made one-time gifts, to the people who’ve brought attention
by sharing this project with friends and family: This is the change you’re making.
Two years ago,
the parents of almost all of these kids would’ve gone home heartbroken.
But the kind of dignified, high-quality healthcare
that everyone deserves is coming to Kono–
and with it, generational change.
To properly support the MCOE and the larger strengthening
of Kono’s healthcare system over the next few years,
we still need to raise the paltry sum of,
uh, just over ten million dollars, so we have a long way to go.
If you can join the monthly donors or make a one-time gift,
check out pih.org/hankandjohn.
If you are considering making a large gift–we’ve had donations
from $2,000 to $500,000– please give via a special link below,
or email me with questions.
And if you can’t afford to donate, that’s okay.
Thank you for your attention. It matters.
If I’ve learned anything from the first three and a half years
of this project it is this: Collectively we are much more likely
to solve the problems that we pay attention to.
When we were in the special care baby unit,
Partners in Health cofounder Ophelia Dahl asked a nurse
if one especially frail baby on a C-Pap machine was likely to live.
All these babies are going to live,
the nurse responded. This is the good news room.
I’m so proud that
Koidu Government Hospital now has a good news room.
And with the work of Marie,
Hawa, Success, and so many others
on the Maternal Center of Excellence, there is much more good news to come.
Hank, look at what humans can do when we come together.
I’ll see you on Friday.