Technology giant Google announced on Thursday that it is giving a $1 million grant to UNICEF through its philanthropic arm, Google.org, to help fight the Zika virus, not only in Brazil, which has been hardest hit, but all over South America.
Zika, which was discovered last year, has already been declared as a public health emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO).
"The evidence is growing and it's getting strong. So I accepted, even on microcephaly alone, that it is sufficient to call an emergency. We need a coordinated international response," said Dr. Margaret Chan, director general of the WHO.
Zika is spread by the Aedes mosquito species and was first identified in 1947 in Uganda.
Not only is Google helping with funds, but a volunteer team of Google engineers, designers, and data scientists is helping UNICEF build a platform to process data from different sources (i.e., weather and travel patterns) in order to visualize potential outbreaks.
Ultimately, the goal of this open-source platform is to identify the risk of Zika transmission for different regions and help UNICEF, governments and NGOs decide how and where to focus their time and resources. This set of tools is being prototyped for the Zika response but will also be applicable to future emergencies.
Unlike many other global pandemics, the spread of Zika has been harder to identify, map and contain. It's believed that four in five people with the virus don't show any symptoms, and the primary transmitter for the disease, the mosquito, is both widespread and challenging to eliminate. "We also have to find better ways to visualize the threat so that public health officials and NGO's can support communities at risk," wrote Google.org director Jacquelline Fuller in a blog post.
YouTube has also pitched in and is in the process of creating videos like this one, of Sesame Street hero Elmo teaching kids, in Spanish, how to avoid getting bitten by mosquitoes.
"The Google grant would help UNICEF to reach 200 million people in the region who are either affected by or vulnerable to Zika with information on how they can protect themselves," said Caryl M. Stern, president and CEO of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF.
