SAN FRANCISCO
Facebook’s founder and his wife announced Tuesday they will make a $25 million donation to fight the Ebola epidemic raging through West Africa.
Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan said the money is going to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Foundation to fight the virus outbreak in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
The disease has killed more than 4,000 people in those countries in the worst Ebola outbreak in history.
“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,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post. “We believe our grant is the quickest way to empower the CDC and the experts in this field to prevent this outcome,” he added.
The CDC has dedicated a staff of more than 700 to support its response to Ebola, which it escalated as the outbreak worsened in July. More than 100 CDC workers have been sent to the worst-affected areas to provide crucial assistance such as contact tracing, database management and health education.
The CDC Foundation collects funds for vital staffing and supplies such as generators, ready-to-eat meals, vehicles and scanners that detect fevers easily.
“Grants like this directly help the frontline responders in their heroic work,” said Zuckerberg, whose estimated worth is $32 billion. “These people are on the ground setting up care centers, training local staff, identifying Ebola cases and much more.”
The CDC has consistently said that the best way to prevent an outbreak of the virus in the United States is to control the epidemic in West Africa.
A Dallas nurse tested positive for the disease on Sunday in the first recorded case of Ebola to be contracted inside the U.S. Nina Pham contracted the virus while helping to treat Thomas Eric Duncan, who died last week, and was the first person to be diagnosed with the virus in the U.S.
Zuckerberg and Chan are making their donation from their fund at the non-profit Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
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