October 14, 2014; Washington Post

 

While relatively modest amounts are being raised from the general public to help fight Ebola, Tech giants appear to be stepping to the plate. Yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, announced that they would donate $25 million from their fund at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation to the CDC Foundation to be used for the containment and treatment of Ebola.

The foundation has said that the donation will be used by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Ebola response efforts in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, and elsewhere as needed.

As readers may remember, the Gates Foundation has made a $50 million grant and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has made one of $9 million.

Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page:

“We need to get Ebola under control in the near term so that it doesn’t spread further and become a long term global health crisis that we end up fighting for decades at large scale, like HIV or polio…We believe our grant is the quickest way to empower the CDC and the experts in this field to prevent this outcome.”

Yesterday, the World Health Organization warned that West Africa could see 10,000 new Ebola cases a week within two months. WHO called the outbreak “the most severe, acute health emergency seen in modern times.”—Ruth McCambridge