Facebook's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said he and his wife are donating $25 million to the Centers for Disease Control to help fight Ebola.

In a statement Tuesday on his Facebook page, the company's billionaire co-founder said he believes Ebola is at "a critical turning point" and that it is spreading quickly.

"We need to get Ebola under control in the near term so that it doesn't spread further and become a long term global health crisis that we end up fighting for decades at large scale, like HIV or polio," he wrote.

The gesture from one of Silicon Valley's richest citizens comes as the CDC is facing increasing concern over the disease. More than 8,000 cases of Ebola have been reported over the course of this latest outbreak. It has also spread to the US, where the first diagnosis, death and retransmission happened in just the past few weeks. US officials have also grappled with revelations that local hospitals are potentially ill-equipped to diagnose or even handle the disease.

The World Health Organization warned Tuesday that worldwide infections could hit 10,000 new cases per week within the next couple of months.

c|net