10 Ways The Tech World Is Fighting Ebola

Tech World Does Its Part To Help Fight Ebola

From supercomputers, cloud services and cold, hard cash, the tech world is opening up its wallet and giving its time to fight Ebola.This week, IBM stepped up, donating its mobile and cloud technology to help health-care workers pinpoint the latest cases of the deadly virus.

As of this writing, the World Health Organization reports a total of 10,141 confirmed, probable and suspected cases of Ebola in West Africa. There have been 4,922 reported deaths.

Here is a look at the top 10 IT companies helping chip away at managing the Ebola outbreak.

Samsung Donates 3,000 Smartphones To Help In Ebola Fight

Korean phone maker Samsung said it will donate 3,000 smartphones to health-care workers in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Samsung said the phones (Galaxy S3 Neo smartphones) will be channeled through the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs (OCHA) and will make their way to 60 Ebola medical clinics.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg And His Wife, Priscilla Chan, Have Pledged $25 Million

Facebook Co-Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, along with his wife Priscilla Chan, donated $25 million to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help the organization contain the Ebola disease.

On his Facebook page, Zuckerberg wrote: "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. We believe our grant is the quickest way to empower the CDC and the experts in this field to prevent this outcome."

IBM Fighting Ebola With Supercomputer Pledge

IBM is trying to give health-care workers a leg up on fighting the Ebola outbreak by making its supercomputers available for mining massive amounts of data collected from field workers. IBM said it will monitor text messages and telephone calls for instant analysis. It will then process that data and create digital heat-maps of where Ebola is flaring up the most in West Africa to help improve its strategy for containing the disease.

Hewlett-Packard Co-founder William Hewlett Donates $5 Million Via The William And Flora Hewlett Foundation

Hewlett-Packard Co-Founder William Hewlett has pledged $5 million via the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to fund the emergency response to Ebola. The foundation, which has long funded efforts to help improve reproductive health and the quality of education in West Africa, said it is now shifting focus to humanitarian aid.

"As in all humanitarian relief efforts," said Hewlett Foundation President Larry Kramer in a statement, "fast and flexible philanthropic dollars can help meet urgent needs, and help pave the way so that the larger resources made available by governments can have a greater impact."

Google Donates $500,000 To Three Ebola-Fighting Organizations

Google has donated a total of $500,000 to three organizations that will each use the money to fight the spread of Ebola. The donation will be split among Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF and the organization called Innovative Support To Emergencies Diseases and Disorders (InSTEDD), according to a report by Fortune.

Carly Fiorina, Former CEO Of Hewlett-Packard Chairs Good360, A Nonprofit Working On Ground In West Africa

Instead of money, Ex-CEO of Hewlett-Packard Carly Fiorina is donating her time as chairwoman for the nonprofit group Good360. The U.S.-based organization that distributes donated goods to charities is working with a number of nonprofits with boots on the ground in West Africa.

One of the West African charities Good360 is working with is the More Than Me Academy, a tuition-free all-girls school in the West Point neighborhood of Monrovia, Liberia. The school was shut down because of the Ebola outbreak, but it has reopened as Ebola-Free West Point Coalition, which is acting as a staging ground for Ebola response teams.

Good360, together with Ebola-Free West Point Coalition, is collecting specific items requested by the aid group that include mattresses, clipboards and toys for children whose parents have died from Ebola.

Bill Gates Donates $50 Million Through The Bill And Melinda Gates Foundation

Bill Gates has pledged $50 million to fight Ebola through his philanthropic Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates, who has made ridding Africa of malaria a central focus of his charitable giving, was asked by the British national daily newspaper, The Guardian, about his commitment to fighting Ebola versus malaria.

"Ebola is shutting down the healthcare system (in West Africa). It’s actually shutting down a lot of activity in terms of food getting to people, kids going to school… More kids are dying of malaria in these three countries now than they were before Ebola came along. In fact, we don’t have very accurate measures coming out of these three countries right now, but almost certainly more people are dying of non-Ebola diseases than are dying of Ebola. So it would be worth stopping the Ebola epidemic if the only benefit was that it put the health system back in place." – Bill Gates.

Microsoft Provides Cloud And Tools For Companies Tackling Ebola

While its Co-Founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen have spent millions on helping fight Ebola, Microsoft has offered its cloud Azure computer power to researchers to help fight the deadly disease. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said Microsoft would offer its cloud-computing platform to medical researchers working on the Ebola virus.

LG Electronics Donates 2,000 Smartphones To West Africa

Communications is key when it comes to staying one step ahead of the Ebola virus. That's why LG Electronics said it would donate 2,000 smartphones to help improve communications among health-care workers. LG said the phones will help professionals collect medical records and monitor patient progress.

Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen Donates $100 Million

Seattle Seahawks owner and Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen has pledged $100 million to fight the spread of Ebola. Along with digging deep to save lives, Allen created the website www.TackleEbola.com. The site, Allen said, solicits donations that are directed to Ebola-related projects in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, such as one that attempts to build 6,000 hand-washing stations and another that provides beds for patients infected with the virus.

"The Ebola virus is unlike any health crisis we have experienced and needs a response unlike anything we have ever seen," Allen said in a statement. "To effectively contain this outbreak and prevent it from becoming a global epidemic, we must pool our efforts and raise the funds, coordinate the resources and develop the creative solutions needed to combat this problem."