Facebook Inc. Chief Executive, Mark Zuckerberg, announced on Tuesday that he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, would donate $25 million to the Centres for Disease Control Foundation to fight Ebola.
The money will go to the CDC Foundation, the charitable organization that raises and distributes funds on behalf the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to public health organizations.
“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,” he said in a post on Facebook.
“We believe our grant is the quickest way to empower the CDC and the experts in this field to prevent this outcome.”
The death toll in the outbreak, first reported in Guinea in March, has reached 4,447 from a total of 8,914 cases, World Health Organization Assistant Director-General, Bruce Aylward said on Tuesday.
The United States had its first fatality from the current Ebola outbreak when Thomas Eric Duncan died in a Dallas hospital last week.
One of the nurses who treated him has also been diagnosed with the disease.
Nigeria is the only country to have successfully contained the outbreak of the Ebola virus.
According to the CDC, Nigeria reported their first case on July 20 when Patrick Sawyer travelled from Liberia to Lagos, Nigeria.
He exposed 72 other passengers with the virus. Nigerian health officials found everyone who had been in contact with Sawyer and developed a mobilization plan.
They reached more than 26,000 households in this process. Nigeria also established the Ebola Management Centre in the process.
Nigeria has not reported new cases since August 31.