Zuckerberg donates millions in fight against deadly disease

Mark Glenning

Billionaire founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has announced that he will contribute $25million (£16million) to the fight against Ebola.

In a post on Facebook – naturally – the entrepreneur revealed the reasons why he and wife Priscilla Chan are making the hefty donation to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and compared the disease to other notable epidemics. He said:

“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.”

Zuckerberg went on to explain that he considers the cash to be the quickest method in giving the CDC the wherewithal to halt the spread of the deadly haemorrhagic fever. It is his wish that the money goes to frontline staff to help them build care centres, diagnosing the illness and training local healthcare staff.

Despite the size of the gift, Zuckerberg’s finances should not take too much of a hit. Facebook has made him an estimated personal fortune of $33billion (£21billion), and has become an integrated part of social media marketing, reputation management and tailored news feeds for more than 1.1 billion users.

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Mark Glenning