Good morning, Hank.

It's Tuesday. I don't really know how to talk  about this, so I guess I'll just start with context.

In 2019, our community  began supporting Partners in Health and the Sierra Leonean government  in their efforts to radically reduce maternal mortality. At the time,  about one in 17 women in Sierra Leone could expect to die in pregnancy  or childbirth. So our family pledged $6.5 million, which eventually  became eight.

But we knew that wasn't nearly enough. Because for  PIH and the Ministry of Health, radically reducing maternal mortality  meant everything from hiring lots of community health workers to building  a world class maternal and infant care center at Koidu Government Hospital.  And that's expensive. I mean, we're talking about building a teaching  hospital that can provide care while also training a new generation of  Sierra Leonean healthcare workers.

So obviously we needed a lot of money.  Like PIH needed to raise over $25 million before they could even  break ground. The total cost of building and running the hospital  for a few years is around $50 million. So we turned to Nerdfighteria, and  thousands of people have become monthly donors to this project at  pih.org/hankandjohn.

Donating between five and $50 a month, they've  raised together several million dollars over the last five years, all of which  has been matched by generous folks within Nerdfighteria who built a  matching fund. But we still needed much more money. So Hank had an idea.  What if our project could be partly funded by, say, an Awesome Socks Club?  Now, I'll be honest, I thought this was ludicrous, but never bet against  Hank Green.

The Awesome Socks Club became an explosive hit.  And alongside its siblings that sell high quality coffee and soap,  they’ve raised over $8 million for this project. With all that together,  we’ve helped raise over $40 million for this project. And while the hospital  won’t fully open until next year, maternal mortality in Sierra Leone is  already on the decline.

In fact, since 2019, it has fallen by more than  50%, meaning thousands of lives saved. But now we get to the complicated  and delicate part, because this is only happening because we’ve had this  really long-term, open-ended focus. We believe that long-term problems  like the systemic impoverishment of Sierra Leone's healthcare system  demand long term solutions, like ongoing funding for Sierra Leone's  healthcare system.

And really, the opening of the hospital next year  will not be an ending. It'll be a beginning. And there will be ongoing funding  needs, not for weeks or months, but for years or even decades.  We know from history that's how healthcare systems get stronger,  is with long term investment, not with like short term crisis response.  And this is something I worry about a lot, Hank, because we're going to  need to fundraise for a long time.

And when a project isn't new and  shiny, that can be difficult. The Awesome Socks Club is  obviously one way to do that because people aren't thinking  primarily about maternal mortality, they're thinking primarily about  getting a great pair of socks. But I just think there are so many  examples of failing to keep up with a commitment or follow through with  a commitment in global health and equity spaces, and I want to be  conscious of that.

That said, I also don't want to limit our ambitions.  And a while back PIH came to us and basically said we are embarking  on a new strategy to prove to the world that comprehensive tuberculosis  care - finding, treating and preventing tuberculosis - can not only dramatically  drive down rates of the disease, it can also strengthen healthcare systems.  And they asked us to help. Now, as you may know, tuberculosis  is the world’s deadliest infectious disease. It kills over 100,000 people  every month, even though it’s curable.

And PIH has a very long history of  expanding access to TB care. And now they are going to prove  that just as we don’t need to live in a world where, in some communities,  one in 17 women die in pregnancy or childbirth, we don't need to live in  a world with TB. They're gonna start in Lesotho, a country where PIH has  been working for almost 20 years and which has the highest incidence  of TB in the world.

And Hank, herein lies the dilemma - can we support  two very long term projects? Like, that's not a rhetorical question -  I don't know. But as a start, we're keeping the socks and soap parts of  Good Store oriented around maternal mortality.

But we're relaunching coffee,  and now tea, as a new brand called Keats & Co. And that will benefit  tuberculosis. It will be against tuberculosis.

To be clear, it won't be  in the tuberculosis benefiting business, but in the tuberculosis destroying  business. Now, Keats & Co will not fully debut until later this year, but  we're launching to Nerdfighteria now with some amazing teas.  We've got green tea, mint tea, chai. We've got Earl Grey, we've got all  kinds of tea.

We're like those YouTube gossip channels. We've got all the tea.  We've also got lots of other stuff, like this strainer, if like me, you're a  bagged tea degenerate. And like our coffee, it's carefully sourced and  really excellent tea.

Like Hank, do you know what percentage of  people who sign up for our coffee stay signed up for our coffee? It's in the  high nineties. Anyway.

There's a link in the doobly doo. Also, there's an  offer code to get 50% off your first subscription order. So, yeah, we're at  least going to do this.

It's tea for TB. Like, when the great poet John Keats  died of tuberculosis in 1821, there was nothing that we could do to stop  that. We simply didn't have the tools.

But in the 200 years since he died,  around a billion people have died of tuberculosis. And now we do have  the tools, which makes it all the more infuriating that the world's deadliest  infectious disease is still killing over a million people a year, even though  it's curable. So I don't want to undermine or distract from our ongoing, long-term  work to fight maternal and infant mortality in Sierra Leone.

But when  PIH comes to you and says this is important and we believe it's the  next big thing in global health equity …you say yes. We all face versions  of this, right? There are many crises and none of us can address all of them.  Also, I don't want this community only to be in the crisis addressing  business.

Were also a bunch of silly nerds doing silly stuff like going to Rax.  But it's also true that I’ve seen the power of this community when it  comes to reducing infant and maternal mortality in Sierra Leone, when it  comes to driving down the price of drugs and tests for tuberculosis.  Never underestimate Nerdfighteria. So I’m hoping that over time, we can  do both of these things well. But I’ll be honest, I don’t know that  we can.

I am aware that resources are limited. Not just money, but also  the resource of attention. But I think Partners in Health is right that  someone needs to prove to the world that comprehensive tuberculosis  care can work, even in impoverished communities, even where TB is  rampant.

So, yeah, resources are limited. But as my late friend  Paul Farmer often reminded me, “Resources are less limited than  they have ever been before.” Hank, I’ll see you on Friday.