Internet Entrepreneur and CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg announced yesterday 14th October, a family donation to fight Ebola.
On his Facebook page, Mark posted “Priscilla and I are donating $25 million to the Centers for Disease Control Foundation to help fight Ebola. The Ebola epidemic is at a critical turning point. It has infected 8,400 people so far, but it is spreading very quickly and projections suggest it could infect 1 million people or more over the next several months if not addressed.
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.
Grants like this directly help the frontline responders in their heroic work. These people are on the ground setting up care centers, training local staff, identifying Ebola cases and much more.
We are hopeful this will help save lives and get this outbreak under control. ”
When a follower on Facebook asked why he is committing so much, Mark responded ” I think we have a responsibility to help out wherever we see a need.
One problem right now is that most people — including government leaders — don’t realize we’re at such a critical turning point. It’s easy to say Ebola is still small compared to other diseases or that it’s mostly in other countries and won’t affect us, but if we don’t get this under control soon, then it will spread and become an epidemic we have to deal with for decades to come.
Spending $25 million to help get this under control now is very little cost compared to all the lives it could save and all the billions of dollars of costs we’d have to spend fighting the disease if it spread much further.”
Way to go, Mark!
CDC is the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention