designed to make it easier for its users to donate to charities
battling the disease.
The social media company is also deploying 100 satellite communication
terminals to boost Internet and phone services to affected areas in
West Africa, where the disease has killed nearly 5,000.
The programs come on the heels of a $25 million donation last month by
CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention toward the Ebola response.
Facebook Inc. says that, over the coming week, its users will see an
option to donate to three nonprofits fighting Ebola. The groups are
the International Medical Corps, the International Federation of Red
Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and Save the Children. Facebook says
it chose charities that work directly on the ground and are able to
accept money globally.
In addition, the Menlo Park, California, is donating terminals that
communicate via satellite and will provide Internet and voice-calling
access to remote areas of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The 100
devices will be used to provide mobile broadband and phone services so
that medical aid workers can get access to voice and data services.
The devices will also help people with Ebola who have been placed in
isolation communicate with their families, and health workers who've
traveled to Africa keep in touch with friends and family back home,
said Chris Weasler, Facebook's head of spectrum policy and
connectivity planning, in an interview from Ghana.
"These units will provide connectivity in places where there is no
coverage," he said. That's because Ebola treatment units are being set
up where the disease pops up, and not necessarily where there is
already Internet coverage. "In other cases, (they will be) adding more
capacity to networks increasingly strained from the influx of
responders," he added.
Facebook is hoping that its donation button will increase the money
going toward Ebola response efforts. Ebola aid donations have lag
behind large natural disasters such as Typhoon Haiyan in the
Philippines last year or the earthquake in Haiti four years ago.
So far, the American Red Cross has raised nearly $3.7 million for
Ebola relief. In comparison, it received $486 million after the Haiti
earthquake and more than $88 million in the aftermath of Typhoon
Haiyan.
"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 wrote on his Facebook page last month.
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