GOOGLEGoogle will be providing logistical and financial support in the battle against Zika virus, according to an announcement posted yesterday (March 3) on the company’s official blog. The move comes amid increasing concerns about the link between Zika infection and microcephaly, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and other health risks.
“As a company whose mission is helping people find information, with a lot of experience in analyzing large sets of data, we’re in a good position to help—at scale and at speed,” according to Google.
In addition to contributing $1 million to UNICEF for ground work in affected areas, and updating its search features to make information on Zika infection more accessible, Google has provided a support team to work on mapping the spread of the virus.
“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,” the company stated. “This set of tools is being prototyped for the Zika response, but ...
