In the summer of 2014, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and officials from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone identified the need for public health emergency management systems and physical emergency operations centers (EOCs) to coordinate Ebola response activities. To meet this need, the CDC Foundation assembled donor funding to help support temporary EOCs, develop permanent EOCs and establish incident management systems to coordinate response efforts and help prepare each country for future health emergencies.

To support efforts to stem the epidemic, the CDC Foundation today announced a $1 million donation from Taiwan to provide flexible funding to help meet the most urgent, on-the-ground needs in West Africa. This donation will be used for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Ebola response effort in the most severely affected countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

The CDC Foundation, actor Idris Elba and a global team of African soccer stars, international health and aid organizations today announced the launch of Africa United, a global health communications campaign aimed at preventing the spread of Ebola in West Africa.

A host of needs have been identified to help address the unprecedented Ebola epidemic in West Africa. One vital need is personal protective equipment (PPE) such as gloves, masks and gowns, for use by public health workers and others involved in the on-the-ground response to the epidemic in the most-impacted countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. To help address this need, the CDC Foundation today announced a public-private partnership with Henry Schein, Inc. and UPS to provide and direct the transport of PPE to West Africa to aid in CDC’s response efforts.

The Ebola epidemic in West Africa is the deadliest in history, taking the lives of more than 4,000 people to date and infecting more than 8,400 individuals in the region. To provide flexible funding to help meet the most urgent on the ground needs, Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Dr. Priscilla Chan today made a grant of $25 million from their donor-advised fund at Silicon Valley Community Foundation to the CDC Foundation.