Facebook joins the fight against Ebola

Mark Zuckerberg and his wife personally donated $25 million to help fight the Ebola outbreak that’s plaguing the people of West Africa, but now the billionaire is taking things a step further. According to Tech Crunch, Zuckerberg has invited all 1.3 billion users of Facebook to join the fight by making it easy to donate money to organizations who’re battling the deadly disease.

A “Donate” button should above the News Feed over the coming week that enables users to send monetary contributions to three non-profit organizations that are actively involved in the crisis in West Africa: International Medical Corps, the Red Cross, and Save the Children.

In addition to this, Facebook is donating 100 terminals that communicate via satellite and will provide both Internet and voice-calling access to remote areas of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. The Menlo Park-based company hoped that these terminals will help patients and health workers keep in touch with their friends and family while they battle the disease.

“These units will provide connectivity in places where there is no coverage,” said Chris Weasler, Facebook’s head of spectrum policy and connectivity planning, as quoted by ABC News. 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, adding more capacity to networks increasingly strained from the influx of responders.”