Google Engineers Working with UNICEF to Map Zika
Local Editor
Alphabet Inc's Google said Thursday its engineers were working with UN child agency UNICEF to analyze data in an effort to map and anticipate the spread of the Zika virus, linked to birth defects among children in Brazil.
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 company further added that it was updating its products to make information on Zika more available.
The outbreak of the virus in Brazil, first detected last year, was linked to 4,863 confirmed and suspected cases of microcephaly, a condition defined by unusually small heads that can result in developmental problems.
Zika, 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."
Relatively, 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.
For his part, President and CEO of the US Fund for UNICEF, Caryl M. Stern, 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.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
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