Koidu Government Hospital

organization · in 53 videos (2019–2026)

It was transformed, with clean maternity wards and an infant care unit that halved neonatal mortality. The Paul Farmer Maternal Center of Excellence finally opened there, and the first baby was born in Sierra Leone's first NICU.

Includes: Maternal Center of Excellence

Videos by year: 2019: 4 · 2020: 6 · 2021: 5 · 2022: 7 · 2023: 5 · 2024: 7 · 2025: 8 · 2026: 11

Also known as: the hospital in Kono

Threads

Maternal Center of Excellence: the brothers' Partners In Health project in Sierra Leone (2019) — project history, completed, 2019–2026
John and Sarah's 2019 trip to Sierra Leone and its hospitals (2019) — story, told 4×, 2020–2026
John: Koidu Government Hospital's special baby care unit will open later in July 2020 (2020) — prediction, came true, 2020–2023
John: the Maternal Center of Excellence should dramatically accelerate progress in care at Koidu (2020) — prediction, came true, 2020–2026
John's 2026 visit to Koidu Government Hospital and the Maternal Center of Excellence (2026) — story, told 3×, 2026

Often together

What comes up in the same parts of the videos; the number is how many parts.

Maternal Center of Excellence (32) · maternal death (26) · Sierra Leone (33) · Partners In Health (27) · child mortality (12) · Sun Basin Soap (4) · Awesome Socks Club (6) · COVID-19 pandemic (5) · Good Store (5) · extreme poverty (3)

What the videos say

The most important statements of each year; all statements.

2019

2019-04-05 · TOO MANY MILKS — announcement: Hank says John is in Sierra Leone with Partners In Health, seeing how individuals and the whole community might help make life easier there, especially for pregnant people and babies. — 00:00:31
2019-10-01 · Why Are Poor Countries Poor? — John: Five years ago the Kono hospital had no electricity, few supplies and almost no patients; today it is well staffed, supplied and used, with a blood bank and an operating room for C-sections. — 00:06:25
- The hospital is still totally inadequate, with only 40 maternal beds for 550,000 people, but the progress is real. — 00:06:54
2019-10-15 · I'm Having a Lot of Feelings — announcement: John says the announcement of the brothers' big project with Partners In Health Sierra Leone is forthcoming: many moving parts, very exciting and very overwhelming. — 00:01:27
2019-10-22 · Why We're Donating $6,500,000 — announcement: John announces that over the next five years the brothers' families are donating $6.5 million to Partners In Health Sierra Leone. — 00:00:01
- John says the plan includes building and supporting a Maternal Center of Excellence at Koidu Government Hospital, with a NICU, more C-section operating rooms and a teaching hospital. — 00:03:54
…and 2 statements more in 2019 — all statements of 2019

2020

2020-01-07 · Endings · Beginnings — John says Partners In Health needs $20 million to break ground on the Maternal Center of Excellence, which will dramatically improve healthcare for women and children in Sierra Leone. — 00:00:48 · also in: Looking Back at My 2020 Goals
- John says thousands of viewers have become monthly donors to the project at pih.org/hankandjohn; he is grateful, as are people in Sierra Leone, one of whom made him an artwork. — 00:01:02
2020-01-28 · Looking Away (Again) — John says when Partners In Health began supporting the hospital in 2014 it lacked consistent electricity and running water, an emergency department, a blood bank and working x-rays; the maternity ward had a dirt floor. — 00:00:00
- John says five years later the hospital was vastly different: clean maternity wards, a working emergency department, a lab, plentiful medication and many well-trained health workers, with more safe deliveries and fewer stillbirths. — 00:00:29
- John says total commitments are now close to $13 million, which is amazing, but there is still a ways to go. — 00:05:16
2020-07-21 · Somebody Once Asked . . . — John: The pandemic challenges health systems everywhere: Koidu Government Hospital's emergency department closed for a time after health workers caught the virus and others had to self-isolate, leaving no replacements. — 00:01:28
- John explains that the brothers are helping Partners In Health and Sierra Leone's Ministry of Health in a multi-year project to strengthen the healthcare system, focused on maternal mortality. — 00:01:28
- The emergency department is running again; PIH has been deeply involved in contact tracing and screening across Sierra Leone, and cases are down 18% from their peak. — 00:01:56
2020-10-07 (said on 2020-10-06, implied) · The Golden Age of Vlogbrothers — John says they are in one of their most ambitious projects yet: supporting PIH and Sierra Leone's Ministry of Health to staff, supply and build a maternal care center, a NICU and a new pediatric ward at Koidu Government Hospital. — 00:02:26
2020-11-17 · Our Biggest Project Yet: A One Year Update — announcement: John recalls that a year ago they announced a project supporting PIH and Sierra Leone's government in radically reducing maternal mortality, raising $25 million over five years to strengthen Kono's health system. — 00:00:00
- The MCOE, like the whole hospital, will be owned by Sierra Leoneans through their government, staffed almost entirely by Sierra Leonean health workers and largely funded by the government. — 00:06:40
2020-12-29 · Looking Back at My 2020 Goals — John: Despite all the unforeseen events of the year, the goal of raising the money for the Maternal Center of Excellence was reached. — 00:02:50
…and 14 statements more in 2020 — all statements of 2020

2021

2021-02-12 · Doing Better — Hank: When John asked him a few years ago to give a significant share of his current money and promise much of his future earnings to people seeking the best solutions, Hank swallowed hard and said yes. — 00:02:35
2021-04-20 · Breaking Ground!!! — announcement: John: Next week (week of 26 April 2021) Partners In Health and the Sierra Leonean government will officially break ground on the Maternal Center of Excellence and the expansion of Koidu Government Hospital, a huge step against maternal mortality. — 00:00:00
- Change is already happening: in the last year neonatal mortality at Koidu Government Hospital fell by 50% thanks to a new infant care unit. — 00:00:29
- John assumed the pandemic would delay the MCOE for months or years, but donations grew every month and, with Partners In Health, over $20 million has been raised. — 00:00:29
- The mental health clinic is growing, as is a new clinic for adolescent care. — 00:01:16
- John says the MCOE should dramatically accelerate this progress. (hedged) — 00:01:16
- Nerdfighteria is amazing: the driving force behind raising over $20 million for a maternal and infant care center at Koidu, and for the things it makes all the time. — 00:03:13
2021-07-23 · The Last 25 Questions I Asked Google — announcement: The description says the Awesome Socks Club is open for two weeks, sign-ups get their first pair in August, and 100% of profits go to Partners in Health to build the Maternal Center of Excellence. — video description
2021-10-01 · A Lie I Heard this Week — Hank says that because John did that work, they have raised tens of millions of dollars for Partners In Health, and donors, Awesome Socks Club members, Pizzamas buyers and community members were all part of it. — 00:02:53
2021-12-21 · NOW I AM THE SCIENCE ONE… — John reports big reductions in child and maternal mortality at Koidu Government Hospital over the last year, and far more people using the health system because they feel they can get care. — 00:02:26
- John recommends reading Partners In Health Sierra Leone's new annual report, or watching a video on improved maternal and child care at Koidu Government Hospital and what the Maternal Center of Excellence will mean. — 00:02:26
- John hopes the progress at Koidu will be accelerated by the Maternal Center of Excellence opening in 2023. (hedged) — 00:02:26

2022

2022-01-04 · After 15 Years on YouTube, THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING THING — John: Partners In Health needed $25 million to build, supply and staff a maternal care center and NICU at Koidu Government Hospital, the only hospital serving Kono's 500,000 people. — 00:00:29
- Nerdfighteria is large but not that large, and reaching such an ambitious target faster than even the rosiest projections shows what such communities can accomplish. — 00:01:27
- In 2021 alone Koidu Government Hospital saw a 36% reduction in child mortality at its pediatric ward. — 00:02:38
- John likens Kono's health system to a wheel: Koidu Government Hospital is the hub, surrounded by primary health care centers with safe delivery spaces, trained staff and a referral and transport system. — 00:04:06
- They hope to raise another $4 million in that time, taking the project from $25 million to $31 million to support the Kayima clinic and expand the MCOE; some will come from Pizzamas. (hedged) — 00:08:00
2022-02-08 · How Much Money Vlogbrothers Makes from YouTube (...and where it goes) — announcement: John says half the money went to the brothers' Partners In Health project to reduce maternal mortality in Sierra Leone; the rest was split between a Complexly educational fund and a fund for emerging educational creators. — 00:00:58
2022-02-22 · On the Death of My Hero — John: Told nothing could be done about one in 17 Sierra Leonean women dying in pregnancy or childbirth, Farmer said otherwise; so the community came to support PIH's maternal and child care center at Koidu. — 00:02:26
2022-04-19 · How do you cross the Sad Gap? — John: Dr. Mukherjee asked them to stay too, and John says that request changed his life. — 00:02:26
2022-05-17 · Reasons Not to Care — John: System strengthening can radically reduce maternal mortality: as Sierra Leone's health system grows stronger, partly through the community's investments, maternal mortality there fell over 10% in five years. — 00:02:26
2022-09-13 · A Million Things at Once — announcement: John: Thanks to increased support, the Kayima clinic is being renovated and is hiring and training staff to become a safe place to deliver babies and refer complicated cases to the hospital. — 00:03:03
2022-11-15 · 3 Years In: What Happened, Why, and What's Next — announcement: John reports that despite supply-chain challenges the Maternal Center of Excellence has begun construction, though it is a long way from finished. — 00:00:58
- John says child mortality at the hospital has fallen by over half in just the last two years. — 00:02:26
…and 4 statements more in 2022 — all statements of 2022

2023

2023-05-02 · GOOD NEWS — John: When PIH began working with Sierra Leone's Ministry of Health eight years ago, Koidu's maternity ward had dirt floors and no patients, after impoverishment, civil war and the Ebola-era health-system collapse. — 00:00:00
- Koidu Government Hospital's maternity ward is now overflowing with new mothers receiving excellent care, with a working operating room, blood bank and medical residents in training. — 00:00:29
- Helped by the nearly $40 million Nerdfighteria and PIH raised over three and a half years, the MCOE will be the world-class center Kono's mothers and children deserve. — 00:01:27
- Isata Dumbuya, the nurse midwife leading maternal health at the hospital, works closely with Build Health International engineer John Chew and his team on the building. — 00:01:56
- A special care baby unit at Koidu's hospital has already dramatically reduced child mortality. — 00:04:23
- The unit is so full that the team sometimes has to make unspeakably difficult decisions about whom to admit, but its babies receive world-class care. — 00:04:52
- In the special care baby unit, PIH co-founder Ophelia Dahl asked whether a frail baby on CPAP would live; the nurse answered that all these babies will live: this is the good news room. — 00:06:49
- John is proud that Koidu Government Hospital now has a good news room, and says the work of Marie, Hawa, Success and others on the MCOE means much more good news to come. — 00:06:49
2023-08-01 · Three Mornings — John says the Awesome Coffee Club donates 100% of profit to charity; Awesome Coffee, Awesome Socks and Sun Basin Soap have donated over $5 million in three years to fight maternal and infant mortality in Sierra Leone. — 00:05:20
2023-08-22 · The Panera Phenomenon — John shows Hank a picture of the Maternal Center of Excellence, a massive extension to Sierra Leone's Koidu Government Hospital funded primarily by Nerdfighteria. — 00:00:20
2023-10-24 · A Tale of Two Cancers — John says Mondeh, like Hank, is now in remission and is a great young artist; visiting him in 2019, John saw his sketch of Mohamed Salah, John's favorite football player. — 00:02:28
2023-12-01 · It's OK if you think less of me after this! — Hank says John gave him a motivation: promise to raise $25 million for a hospital in Sierra Leone without knowing how, which excites him in a way making money for himself did not. — 00:03:15
…and 1 statement more in 2023 — all statements of 2023

2024

2024-01-16 · The Bank of Nerdfighteria — John: In 2019 the community began supporting Partners In Health's efforts to radically reduce maternal and child mortality in Sierra Leone's Kono District. — 00:00:25 · also in: The Tea
2024-02-16 · How Much Does it Cost to be a Nerdfighter — Hank recalls that John convinced him to help raise $25 million to build the Maternal Center of Excellence in Sierra Leone with Partners In Health, which was scary and motivating. — 00:00:29
- For the first time in a long time, P4A money will not go to the Maternal Center of Excellence, now pretty well supported, but to the global fight against tuberculosis. — 00:05:05
2024-03-12 · How We End TB — John says that work is hard, as seen in the fight against maternal mortality in Sierra Leone, but results are huge: maternal mortality there has halved since 2019. — 00:03:50
2024-03-19 · Our $80,000,000 Bet — John says that on maternal mortality in Sierra Leone or the global TB crisis, he is astonished by what Nerdfighteria has done by orienting attention and resources in the same direction, and is grateful. — 00:04:23
2024-06-18 · The Tea — John: For PIH and the Ministry of Health, radically reducing maternal mortality meant everything from hiring many community health workers to building a teaching maternal and infant care center at Koidu Government Hospital. — 00:00:29
- Altogether they helped raise over $40 million for the project, and maternal mortality in Sierra Leone has already fallen by more than 50% since 2019, saving thousands of lives. — 00:01:27
2024-11-19 · Let's Talk about Money — John: In 2019 the brothers committed to raising $25 million to help build a maternal and infant care center in the Kono District of Sierra Leone. — 00:00:26
- Building a hospital is not simple, and the brothers knew they would eventually need far more than $25 million for its ongoing costs, such as hiring community health workers to find at-risk pregnancies. — 00:00:40
2024-11-26 · Good News — John: Since 2019 the community has made a long-term, open-ended commitment to pay attention to and raise funds for Sierra Leone's maternal and child health care system. — 00:01:24
- In Kono, the district where Partners In Health began working in 2019, maternal mortality has fallen further: Koidu Government Hospital has seen a reduction close to 80% since 2019. — 00:02:40
- About 2,000 more mothers survive childbirth every year in Sierra Leone than in 2019, when the brothers' project with Partners In Health began. — 00:03:16
…and 5 statements more in 2024 — all statements of 2024

2025

2025-05-13 · I Have the BEST News — John says all those efforts combined raised the needed $20 million and then some. — 00:01:27
2025-05-16 · No One Knows When They Don't Die — Hank says the community's work in Sierra Leone means fewer women are already dying in childbirth, a very quiet victory. — 00:02:26
2025-06-13 · Moving to Hope from Hopelessness (3 ways) — announcement: Hank: After a call with Partners In Health, Hank announces they have raised the $50 million it takes to build the Maternal Center of Excellence in Sierra Leone and get it running. — 00:06:49
2025-09-30 · WHO ARE WE AND WHAT ARE WE DOING — Hank says the community realized early that the internet responds well to sudden disasters but not to ongoing ones, such as very high maternal mortality in parts of Sierra Leone. — 00:02:55
2025-10-01 · Real Reasons for Hope — John says that in Sierra Leone over the same period maternal mortality has dropped by over 60%. — 00:03:24
- John says the hospital now has all of that and much more, and as a result maternal mortality there has declined precipitously. — 00:03:53
- John says maternal mortality at the hospital will decline further with the opening next month (November 2025) of the Maternal Center of Excellence there. — 00:03:53
- John says this is primarily the result of the Sierra Leonean government investing in health and health workers, but private philanthropy, including all viewers, played an important role. — 00:03:53
- John tells viewers who bought a Pizzamas shirt, donated monthly to Partners In Health or encouraged others to care about maternal mortality that they played a role in this story. — 00:03:53
2025-10-31 · We Did It… — announcement: Hank announces that the ribbon has just been cut at the Maternal Center of Excellence at Koidu Government Hospital, thanking the community, Partners In Health and Sierra Leone's Ministry of Health. — 00:06:16
2025-11-11 · John's Annual Psychophysical Decline — John reminds himself that, as Hank noted last week (week of 3 November 2025), the ribbon has been cut on the completed Maternal Center of Excellence in Sierra Leone. — 00:00:58
2025-12-09 · Hank Green, from A to Z — John says Hank helped fund the Maternal Center of Excellence at Koidu's government hospital, which triples the region's maternal beds and gives Sierra Leone its first ever NICU. — 00:02:26
…and 3 statements more in 2025 — all statements of 2025

2026

2026-02-14 · Project for Awesome 2026 part 4! — announcement: John announces that a couple of hours earlier the Maternal Center of Excellence at Koidu Government Hospital in Kono District, Sierra Leone, delivered its first baby. — 00:04:18
2026-02-15 · Project for Awesome 2026 part 5! — announcement: John says people can now get safe emergency C-sections at the Maternal Center of Excellence, which has a functioning NICU for the first time in the history of Sierra Leone, a game-changing difference in maternal and infant health care in the Kono region and beyond. — 04:08:59
2026-02-20 · What We Actually Did. — Hank recalls that a few years later John told him of a big idea: responding not to a sudden disaster but to a long-term one that was just the way things had been. — 00:00:29
- Hank announces that this weekend, during P4A, which was instrumental in building the Paul E. Farmer Maternal Center of Excellence at Koidu Government Hospital, the first baby was born in Sierra Leone's first NICU. — 00:03:49
2026-02-24 · Risk Is a Privilege — announcement: John says the Paul Farmer Maternal Center of Excellence finally opened at Koidu Government Hospital, radically transforming infant and maternal care in eastern Sierra Leone. — 00:00:00
- John says that as a community they made that bet, and so far it has worked. — 00:03:53
2026-04-14 · Babies. Babies. Babies. — John announces the Maternal Center of Excellence at Koidu Government Hospital has passed its first major milestone: its 500th baby delivered, in just a few months. — 00:00:00
- John is reminded that long-term problems demand long-term solutions: after seven years with Partners In Health and Sierra Leone's Ministry of Health, they are seeing the transformation. — 00:03:24
2026-04-28 · What I Can't Show You — John says the hospital now sees more than three times as many people as when he first visited. — 00:00:58
- John says KGH's infrastructure is woefully insufficient for a profoundly impoverished region of 600,000: no ICU, and the sickest children's ward had two or three children per bed. — 00:01:27
- John says 500 babies were born at the MCOE in its first six weeks of operation, including over 200 C-sections, many of them emergencies that might otherwise have meant maternal and child death. — 00:05:37
2026-08-25 · The Great Thing about Infectious Disease — announcement: John: The 2,000th baby has been born at the Nerdfighteria-supported the Maternal Center of Excellence in Sierra Leone since it opened in February; all will have access to vaccination at Koidu Government Hospital or local clinics. — 00:05:21
…and 16 statements more in 2026 — all statements of 2026