Time Names Ebola Fighters as Its 2014 Person of the Year

Dr. Kent Brantly, one of the American health care
workers who contracted Ebola while fighting the outbreak
in West Africa
“Anyone willing to treat Ebola victims ran the risk of
becoming one,” Time magazine editor-in-chief Nancy
Gibbs wrote in an editor’s note. “For tireless acts of
courage and mercy, for buying the world time to boost its
defenses, for risking, for persisting, for sacrificing and
saving, the Ebola fighters are Time’s 2014 Person of the
Year.”
For the issue, the magazine published five covers featuring
different Ebola fighters.
Dr. Kent Brantly, one of the American health care
workers who contracted Ebola while fighting the outbreak
in West Africa, was one of them.
Brantly called the selection a “huge honor” in an ongoing
battle.
“Ebola fighters are not people who did something
courageous,” Brantly said on NBC’s “Today” show,
where Time unveiled its Person of the Year. “They are
still in the trenches fighting.”
“Ebola is a war, and a warning,” Gibbs continued. “The
global health system is nowhere close to strong enough to
keep us safe from infectious disease, and ‘us’ means
everyone, not just those in faraway places where this is
one threat among many that claim lives every day. The
rest of the world can sleep at night because a group of men
and women are willing to stand and fight.”
“I have witnessed the devastation Ebola causes and have
personally experienced the stigma that fear of this disease
brings,” Kaci Hickox, the Maine nurse who stirred
controversy after she was ordered quarantined by New
Jersey Governor Chris Christie upon her arrival in
Newark with a slight fever, wrote in the magazine.
“Still, I hope that compassion and knowledge will soon
overcome the fear so that we can beat Ebola.”
Finalists for the annual title — given to “the person or
persons who most affected the news and our lives, for
good or ill, and embodied what was important about the
year” — included Ferguson protesters, Russian President
Vladimir Putin, Taylor Swift, Alibaba CEO Jack
Ma, Apple chief Tim Cook, NFL Commissioner Roger
Goodell and Masoud Barzani, the acting President of the
Iraqi Kurdish Region.
Pope Francis was Time’s Person of the Year in 2013. In
2012, it was President Barack Obama.