The price tag for stopping Ebola is now $600 million. At least that’s how much United Nations officials estimate it would cost to halt the deadly epidemic still sweeping across West Africa. A month ago, the figure was just over $70 million. On Sept. 2, Tom Friedan of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the window to contain the outbreak is closing.
Governments typically come to the rescue in these kinds of crises, and American and European officials announced this week they would commit $250 million to fight Ebola. But what about Bill Gates? The Microsoft (MSFT) co-founder and world’s richest man has already spent billions to combat such deadly diseases as malaria and polio, especially in Africa. Through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, he has already given $1 million to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF last month to fight Ebola in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. But with a personal net worth of $85.7 billion (according to the latest Bloomberg Billionaires Index), he could afford more. Through the foundation, he’s developed a deep network of partners and projects that bring together the public and private sector. He even chose a doctor, Susan Desmond-Hellmann, to take over as chief executive of the foundation this past May.
Yet the foundation’s focus has been on tackling diseases that kill millions, like malaria, not just thousands, as Ebola has so far. And as press secretary Chris Williams noted in response to a media query, “While the foundation’s resources are significant, they represent only a small portion of worldwide funding for global health.”
The list of other philanthropists who have contributed to the Ebola cause includes Gates’s fellow Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who gave $2.8 million to the American Red Cross through his family foundation in early August to fight the Ebola outbreak and donated another $100,000 to a matching fund. That’s the largest donation so far from private philanthropists, according to Stacy Palmer, who edits the Chronicle of Philanthropy. She notes also that the Dubai-based Legatum Foundation has launched a so-called Ebola Crisis Fund with several other foundations. Its goal: to reach $1 million within three months.
Yet a million here or there isn’t likely to stanch what Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization, just called “the largest, most severe, and most complex” outbreak of Ebola since it was first diagnosed 40 years ago. While a virus that has killed about 1,900 people on the other side of the planet might not sound like much of a global threat, the high fatality rate and breadth of this outbreak has people scared. That could inspire Gates to donate additional funds. If it inspires many others to do the same, $600 million won’t seem so hard to reach.