As the Ebola fever takes over online and offline conversations across the world, with Google reporting over 2000 percent rise in searches on Ebola withing last week, Lagos-based Big Cabal Media designed and built EbolaFacts.com in 24 hours to give the public access to curated information and facts about the deadly outbreak.
Targeted specifically at the West African market, the site has received over 600,000 hits and has been seen on Facebook about 850,000 times with offline communities calling for a printed version and the site is being translated into French, Swahili, Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa and Pidgin.
According to Dr. Seyi Taylor of Big Cabal Media, “With the launch of Ebola Facts, we’re tackling an age-old problem of containing a deadly virus with 21st century technology. Millions of Africans are now regular internet consumers and see it as a first point of call for medical information.”
Taylor added that Ebola Facts was designed to be easily accessible, on all tech platforms – mobile being the no. 1 platform here on the continent – and, importantly, free. The publishing house is hoping that people share this potentially life-saving information as part of the global effort to contain and kill the ebola outbreak.
According to CNN, the World Health Organization said yesterday that Ebola has now claimed lives of over 900 people and Saudi Arabia has joined the list of countries with suspected cases. Meanwhile a state of emergency has been declared in Liberia for 90 days to held end the spread of the deadly virus in the West African country.
Ebolafacts.com aims to show user the symptoms of ebola, explain what the virus actually is, dispell myths, and as well inform the public how the virus can transmit from one person to another. The launch comes as the virus continues to ravage communities in West Africa, and is creeping across international borders at an alarming rate.
As we speak, most areas of the world are in panic after a man died in Saudi Arabia, apparently of Ebola after visiting Sierra Leone and a nurse just died in Nigeria, reported to have been nursing Patrick Sawyer, a Liberian-American man who recently died of Ebola in Nigeria after leaving Liberia. An Ebola-infected Spanish priest has been flown to Madrid’s La Paz hospital for treatment while American doctor Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, have been sent to the US for treatment. With proper information on what they were dealing with, these and several other cases could have been avoided. Ebolafacts.com will make such crucial knowledge public online, as flyers, via newspaper ads and digital billboards.
