The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced that it is contributing $10 million toward the fight to contain the outbreak.
Of that total, the foundation is giving $5 million to support the response in China, while the other $5 million is going to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for screening and crisis preparedness there.
The money will be spent on “emergency funds and corresponding technical support to help frontline responders in China and Africa accelerate their efforts to contain the global spread of 2019-nCoV,” the foundation said in a press release.
The money going to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is for “technical support to implement the screening and treatment of suspected cases, laboratory confirmation of 2019-nCoV diagnoses, and the safe isolation and care of identified cases,” the organization said in its press release.
No African countries have reported any confirmed cases of the new coronavirus, but a woman in the Ivory Coast with flu-like symptoms is under observation and being kept in isolation after arriving from Beijing over the weekend, according to the South China Morning Post. She is a student who has lived in Beijing for five years and was returning to her West African home during the Lunar New Year holiday.
“Our commitment to the Africa CDC is part of a broader effort to help strengthen the global response to the novel coronavirus outbreak,” a spokesperson for the Gates Foundation told Business Insider.
