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 Google said in a statement it was providing a $1 million grant to
the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund to help their
volunteers on the ground, mostly in Latin America. The U.S. company
said that it was also updating its products to make information on
Zika more available.
The outbreak of Zika in Brazil, first detected last year, has been
linked to 4,863 confirmed and suspected cases of microcephaly, a
condition defined by unusually small heads that can result in
developmental problems.
The Zika virus, transmitted by mosquitoes, is spreading rapidly in
the Americas, according to the World Health Organization, which last
month declared the outbreak a global health emergency.
But much about Zika remains unknown, including whether the virus
actually causes microcephaly. One of the difficulties in tracking
the outbreak is that no reliable test for the virus exists, and in
many cases victims present no symptoms.
Google said a volunteer team of its engineers, designers, and data
scientists was helping UNICEF build a platform to process data from
different sources, including weather and travel patterns, in order
to visualize potential outbreaks.
"The goal of this open source platform was 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,"
the company said.
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Chris Fabian, UNICEF Innovation Co-Lead, said the open source
platform could be expanded for global use and employed in future
disease outbreaks.
Caryl M. Stern, President and CEO of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, said
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.
(Editing by Alden Bentley)
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