Mark Zuckerberg Is Donating $25 Million To Fight Ebola

The Facebook founder and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are donating the money to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are donating $25 million to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to fight Ebola, he announced Tuesday.

In a Facebook post, Zuckerberg said his grant would be the quickest way to empower the CDC and prevent Ebola from becoming a long-term health crisis like AIDS.

Facebook: zuck

The full text of his post:

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.
To learn more about the fight against Ebola: http://www.cdcfoundation.org/ebola-outbreak.

Zuckerberg also engaged with a commenter who asked a pertinent question about his donation.

The World Health Organization estimated Tuesday that there could be up to 10,000 Ebola cases per week by December.

Dr Aylward: By December 2014, 5,000 to 10,000 #Ebola cases per week anticipated in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone

So far, 4,447 people have died of Ebola.

Dr Bruce Aylward: As of this morning 8,914 #Ebola cases and 4,447 deaths have been reported to WHO

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