Today Facebook announced three initiatives in its fight against Ebola. This is following the footsteps of its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg who recently donated $25 million to fight the disease that has brought death to the houses of over 4000 people in West Africa.
The three initiatives are as follows:
- An easy way to donate – a Donate feature to raise awareness and funds for International Medical Corps, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and Save the Children
- Health education – collaborating with UNICEF to show information on Ebola symptoms and treatment to people in targeted regions on Facebook
- Emergency voice and data services – working with NetHope to provide vital communications capacity to medical and aid workers in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone
An easy way to donate:
Organizations involved in the fight against Ebola are using Facebook to raise funds for their relief efforts.
Facebook wants to amplify these calls for action and help organizations raise awareness and connect directly with people around the world. Over the next week, people on Facebook will see a message at the top of News Feed with an option to donate to three different nonprofits doing important work on the ground in West Africa: International Medical Corps, the Red Cross and Save the Children.
To do this, Facebook is using its Donate feature, where people can donate directly to one of these three organizations. If they want to, people can also choose to share that they donated on Facebook.
All of the money raised will go directly to the charities working on the ground. Please visit facebook.com/fightebola to learn more.
Health education:
Accurate public health information is critical to containing the spread of Ebola.
So Facebook is working with UNICEF to deliver important education about Ebola symptoms and treatment to people in affected and neighboring regions. These UNICEF messages, which appear in News Feed in the appropriate local language, focus on Ebola detection, prevention and treatment.
Emergency voice and data services:
Communication and access to information is crucial to people fighting Ebola on the ground, but many of the areas most affected lack the infrastructure, like landline and cellular coverage, to support them.
Working with NetHope, a consortium of 41 leading international NGOs, Facebook is donating 100 mobile satellite communication terminals for deployment in remote areas of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and to provide voice and data services that meet the highest priority needs of medical and aid workers. These terminals, called Broadband Global Area Network devices, communicate via satellite and provide mobile broadband and telephony services.
Focusing on areas where there is little to no existing communications capacity, NetHope will deploy these terminals to help medical and aid workers with contact tracing, communication, case management and community mobilization. Response organizations estimate that for each patient, at least 10 other people will provide health care, contact tracing and other services that may require telecommunications — and improvements are most important in rural areas where infrastructure is weakest and case loads are highest.
