Google invests millions of dollars in fight against real-world viruses
With the OECD Health Systems broken (refer to AI 107), Google in response has announced that it will invest more than $14 million (£7 million) in the global fight against diseases such as bird flu, HIV, malaria and tuberculosis.
Google said its Predict and Prevent initiative was helping to identify 'hot spots' where future pandemics may strike, detecting new pathogens in the animal and human population, and providing information and advice about the best ways to respond to disease outbreaks to stop them developing into global crises.
"The teams we're funding today are on the frontiers of digital and genetic early detection technology," said Dr Larry Brilliant, executive director of Google.org, the search engine's philanthropic arm.
"We hope that their work, with partners across environmental, animal, and human health boundaries, will help solve centuries-old problems and save millions of lives."
Google's $14 million donation will help fund high-tech initiatives to fight lethal infectious diseases.
These include a satellite-mapping service that will track the progress of deforestation and settlement expansion in tropical countries and the health problems this may cause, and investment in better weather and climate predictions in Africa to predict possible future outbreaks of disease.
Google's money will also go towards screening projects in 'hot spot' areas such as Cameroon and Malaysia to identify where animal-borne diseases risk making the jump to humans, and towards disease-reporting strategies designed to limit the impact of outbreaks.
