In a report published by the Fortune News, “Google has donated $1 million to the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and some of its engineers are working with the agency to map the Zika virus outbreak”. Google has also mentioned that a team of engineers, designers and data scientists will help UNICEF to come up with open-source platform that uses a wide range of data to predict potential outbreaks. The aim is to work out where the Zika virus may spread to next.
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That link is strong enough that Canada recently joined the list of countries urging women to delay pregnancy (in this case, only if they have travelled to a Zika-infected country).
University of Auckland senior lecturer Dr Siouxsie Wiles said it was unlikely a mosquito with the virus had reached the country.
A doctor tested the person, who was not identified by name, age or gender, after the person complained of symptoms associated with the mosquito-borne virus. Additionally, the company has launched a donations matching campaign for Googlers aimed at providing an additional $500,000 to UNICEF and the Pan American Health Organization.
The disease is spread through the bite of an infected Aedes species mosquito. The spread is so alarming that other companies have also joined the fight against the said virus; the latest of which is the search engine giant, Google. But unlike many other global pandemics, the spread of Zika has been harder to identify, map and contain.
She said four out of five people with the virus don’t show any symptoms, and the primary transmitter for the disease, the mosquito Aedes aegypti, is widespread and challenging to eliminate.
Travis County health officials have confirmed the second case of Zika virus in the region. “We’ve also made some updates to our products to make Zika information more accessible, and we’re providing UNICEF with a $1 million grant to help their efforts on the ground”. Currently, there is no specific treatment or vaccine for Zika and most individuals recover on their own. Additionally, Google is leveraging YouTube and working with popular creators across Latin America (like Sesame Street) to raise awareness about prevention.
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According to Tech Crunch, Jacquelline Fuller, director of Mountain View’s philanthropic arm Google.org said that as a firm whose aim is helping people find information, with a huge experience in analyzing large sets of data, they are “in a good position to help – at scale and at speed”.
