Mark Zuckerberg is using some of his billions for a good cause this week. He and wife Priscilla Chan have donated $25 million to the Centers for Disease Control in an effort to fight Ebola and prevent the disease from becoming an epidemic in the United States. Where will that money be used? The CDC will allot those funds to its Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia response teams, as well as other response teams in places around the world where the disease is a threat.
The money will come from their Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and it follows a donation from Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, that was made last month in the amount of $9 million. Additionally, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife have agreed to pledge $50 million from their own foundation to fight Ebola.
The World Health Organization has called this outbreak the “most severe, acute health emergency seen in modern times,” now that the death rate from the disease is up to 70 percent. It’s important to note that of the 4,000 deaths associated with the disease, the vast majority have been residents from West Africa without any access to modern medical facilities or health care.
The case of the American who contracted Ebola when out of the country, bringing it back to the United States, is very rare. However, the nurse who contracted the disease from the Texas man is currently undergoing treatment and reportedly doing “well,” according to Texas health officials.
The money donated by Zuckerberg and his wife will help in the ongoing efforts to eradicate the disease where it’s started and to help prevent an outbreak from occurring in the United States, which could lead to a massive health scare being that the country is so connected and the disease could spread quickly. The CDC advises residents of the US not to panic.
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