At $50 Million, Bill Gates Just Made His Largest Donation Ever To Fight Ebola

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the charity run by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his wife, announced Wednesday that it will be donating $50 million toward fighting the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

This marks the largest-ever donation to a humanitarian cause from the foundation, according to the Associated Press. The group had previously donated $10 million toward fighting the outbreak in West Africa.

"By fighting Ebola now, we can make sure it doesn't become an epidemic in [West] Africa," Gates tweeted on Wednesday.

The record pledge was largely inspired by a request from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for $600 million to fight the epidemic. The virus has killed more than 2,000 people across Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria and is spreading at an uncontrollable rate.

A statement from the Gates Foundation said: "To date, the Gates Foundation has committed more than $10 million of the $50 million to fight the Ebola outbreak, including $5 million to WHO for emergency operations and R&D assessments and $5 million to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF to support efforts in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea to purchase essential medical supplies, coordinate response activities, and provide at-risk communities with life-saving health information."

On Thursday, Reuters reported that fellow Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen will annouce that he is donating $9 million to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help fight the virus.

Both commitments from the tech giants come at a critical time as the World Health Organization and Doctors Without Boarders have said there is a severe shortage of resources to contain the Ebola outbreak.