good morning heck it's tuesday exactly
15 years ago i was making my second ever
vlog brothers video and today i get to
announce what is in my opinion at least
the most amazing thing that has ever
happened in this little 15 year old
corner of the internet so back in 2019
our family made a long-term commitment
to support partners in health's efforts
to radically reduce maternal mortality
in sierra leone's kono district where at
the time one in 17 women died in
pregnancy or childbirth but we couldn't
do this anywhere near alone because
partners in health needed 25 million
dollars to fund the building supplying
supporting and staffing of a maternal
care center and nicu at coidu government
hospital which is the only hospital
serving the 500 000 people of kono even
before kovid raising 25 million dollars
felt somewhere between like ambitious
and impossible but we felt like it was
worth reaching for because we knew it
could transform the kind of care
available in the region and also because
it would serve as a teaching hospital
that could train the next generation of
sierra leonean midwives nurses and
doctors since then thousands of you have
become monthly donors to this project
and hundreds more people have banded
together to form a matching fund to
ensure that every dollar donated monthly
gets matched and combined with
fundraising from pih and support from
projects like life's library and the
awesome socks club ground has broken on
the maternal center of excellence it is
on track to open in 2023 and we
champagne pop are on track to raise over
25 million dollars can you drink on
youtube
you can hmm ah it's a little early for
champagne brief camera two side note
when i say on tractoris i mean assuming
donations continue at about the same
monthly level that they're currently at
so if you're giving now and can afford
to keep doing so thank you and your
support remains critical if like me
you're interested in the details of how
the money is being raised and how it's
being accounted there is an unlisted
live stream in the doobly-doo okay back
to camera one we are a large community
but not that large in that we've reached
such an ambitious fundraising target
faster than even our rosiest projections
is a real testament to what communities
like nerdfighteria can accomplish and in
a time when so much is so terrible i am
really heartened by the generosity and
solidarity i have seen in the last two
years and it's working even as the mcoe
is under construction the healthcare
system in kono is getting stronger fewer
mothers are dying for want of an
emergency c-section and more kids are
surviving maternal mortality is still
hundreds of times higher in sierra leone
than it ought to be but it is getting
better and child mortality is decreasing
dramatically in 2021 alone koidu
government hospital saw a 36 reduction
in child mortality at its pediatric ward
i sometimes worry though that those
statistics can obscure the hundreds of
human stories they contain so here's one
story this is emma who until recently
was a normal 13 year old in konoshi and
her twin sister katie do well in school
they're both into soccer they both love
pop music but emma often felt unwell
over the last couple years which slowed
her down in school and then one day she
had a seizure so her family took her to
koidu government hospital where the care
team suspected malaria so she got some
medication and went home and initially
felt better but then returned to the
hospital very critically ill after every
other test came back negative emma was
driven five hours to one of the only ct
scanners in sierra leone where it was
revealed that she had meningitis caused
by tuberculosis in her brain her
condition required five months of
treatment in the hospital but she
recovered and now inspired by the nurses
who took care of her both emma and katie
want to become nurses now there are many
ways to think about emma's story one is
that because the healthcare system in
kono is getting stronger she survived
another is that if she had lived in a
region where ct scanning is widely
available she never would have become so
sick and another is that many kids in
kono are dying in the same situation
because the hospital is too far away and
too expensive to get to so you can think
of the healthcare system in kono as a
wheel where the hub is coitu government
hospital which is surrounded by primary
health care centers where people should
be able to get care for everyday
ailments and access basic treatments in
medicine these clinics also need to have
safe clean well-staffed spaces for
delivering babies and they need to have
staff trained to identify serious
illnesses like emma's or serious
pregnancy complications and there has to
be a system in place to refer those
emergencies to the hospital and
transportation to get them there as we
learned at the very beginning of this
project long-term systemic problems
demand long-term systemic solutions when
sarah and i visited kono in 2019 we
spent some time at a primary health care
center in the town of combiende and the
clinic was not really functioning there
was no running water no electricity no
paid staff there was a cold storage
system for vaccines but that was about
it and so the only actual health care we
saw that day was a mother getting her
child vaccinated the place was otherwise
empty because why would you use a health
care system that can't provide health
care thanks to support from pih donors
and the sierra leone ministry of health
the clinic in combiende recently
celebrated major improvements there is
now a safe well-stocked pharmacy running
water a laboratory training and
mentorship for clinicians and there are
patients which is one way you see the
success like in the town of sawafe the
primary health care center there saw
five thousand patients in 2020 but then
because of big improvements to the
clinic made by local health leaders and
partners in health the clinic in suwafe
is now a place where you can deliver
babies safely and get good care and as a
result in 2021 it saw over 20 000
patients okay so when hank and i found
out that we were on track to reach this
25 million dollar goal we asked pih
sierra leone what else they needed and
they answered first we want to make the
mcoe a better teaching hospital with
dedicated classrooms and a 100 bed
dormitory to better support training of
the next generation of maternal and
child care professionals perhaps who
knows even including emma and katie they
also want an outpatient department at
the maternal center of excellence that
can provide maternal hiv support and
family planning and they want to build a
first class warehouse to store and
manage medications and supplies lastly
they want to support a primary health
care clinic in the town of kyima where
the clinic currently looks like the one
in combiende did back in 2019. in the
dry season there is no running water
nighttime electricity is rare the
pharmacy is inadequate and so are the
facilities for delivering babies what do
i mean by inadequate i mean this is the
only bed for laboring mothers in a city
of 90 000 people and the lack of water
and electricity is a huge problem as the
facilities chief health officer ibrahim
rogers put it my first
challenge
this water every inch of our work
needs water right now without running
water the water to wash hands and
instruments is stored in buckets that
healthcare workers have to refill
throughout the day by walking to the
city's tap as for electricity a
traditional birth attendant at the
clinic explained that without it she
often has to hold a flashlight while
other team members attempt to deliver a
baby in darkness these conditions
dramatically increase the risks for both
mother and child and it simply doesn't
have to be this way the best clinic in
kono the pih supported well body clinic
has the stuff space staff systems and
support to provide good maternal and
child care and as a result there hasn't
been a maternal death at well body in
over a year
and we hope that someday soon we can say
the same for the clinic in kaima to help
make that happen our family is
increasing our personal commitment to
partners in health by 2 million over the
next four years and we're hoping to
raise an additional four million dollars
in that time to take the total value of
this project from 25 million dollars to
31 million dollars that'll be enough to
get some support to the clinic in kaima
and expand with the maternal center of
excellence can be now some of that four
million dollars will come from projects
like pizzamas but by far the most
efficient and effective way to support a
stronger healthcare system in kono is by
becoming a monthly or one-time donor to
this project at pih.org hank and john
lastly there are way too many people to
thank from ph sierra leone's executive
director dr byler berry to the maternal
health lead isata dambaya to everyone at
dftba.com but i want to say a special
thank you to everyone who has donated to
this project from five dollar gifts from
10 year olds to a 500 000 gift from
youtube ceo susan wojcicki we got here
the only way people get anywhere good
together and whether you can afford to
give or not thank you for following this
project and for sharing it with your
friends and family your attention is
also a gift and a critical one one more
time the link is pih.org hank and john
wink in the doobly-doo someone go back
to 2007 and tell this doofus that the
community building up around
vlogbrothers will one day help fund a
maternal center of excellence and nicu
thank you so much if i've learned one
thing from 15 years on youtube it's this
never underestimate nerdfighteria
hank i'll see you on friday