Mark Zuckerberg, Ebola: Facebook Founder Gives $25 Million To Research On The Current Epidemic Hitting America [VIDEO]
With cases of Ebola popping up in Dallas, Texas, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is looking to help combat the disease with a big donation to the research on the epidemic.
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In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Zuckerberg announced that he, and wife Priscilla Chan, would be donating $25 million to the CDC Foundation to help fund Ebola research. In his post, Zuckerberg called the epidemic 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," he wrote.
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"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 added that by donating to CDC, he feels the money is going to the experts who should be able to help find an outcome most quickly.
"We believe our grant is the quickest way to empower the CDC and the experts in this field to prevent this outcome," he said.
"Grants like this directly help the front-line responders in their heroic work. These people are on the ground setting up care centers, training local staff, identifying Ebola cases and much more."
The donation will go to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Ebola response effort in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and in other spots in the world where Ebola is a threat, the foundation said Tuesday, according to USA Today.
