Zika Virus News: Google Assigns Engineers To Map Disease Future Path

Google is providing support to combat Zika in Brazil and around the world. The company's philanthropic organization, announced plans to help and team up with UNICEF and other organizations to fight the disease that's rapidly spreading across the U.S. and other countries. "A volunteer team of Google engineers, designers, and data scientists is helping UNICEF build a platform to process data from different sources (weather and travel patterns) in order to visualize potential outbreaks,” Google said in a statement. “The goal of this open source platform is to identify the risk of Zika transmission for different regions and help UNICEF, governments and NGO’s decide how and where to focus their time and resources. This set of tools is being prototyped for the Zika response, but will also be applicable to future emergencies.”

The outbreak of the virus has been linked to several cases of microcephaly, a condition defined by unusually small heads that can result in developmental problems, and the Guillain-Barré syndrome, an uncommon sickness of the nervous system in which a person’s own immune system damages the nerve cells, causing muscle weakness, and sometimes, paralysis. "The organization expects to reach 200 million affected or vulnerable people in Brazil and throughout Latin America with these efforts,” adding that Google will donate a $1 million grant to the organization, to raise awareness of the mosquito-borne virus.