Magazine names Ebola fighters as 'Person Of The Year'

monjola sotubo

December 10, 2014 5:02 PM

Every year, TIME aims to give the award to "a person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or ill, and embodied what was important about the year."

TIME Magazine has awarded its 'Person Of The Year' accolade to a group of people it calls the "Ebola fighters".

The Ebola outbreak has dominated the news this year due to being the worst ever recorded and because those who fight the disease face an enormous risk of catching it themselves.

According to the magazine's editor, Nancy Gibbs, the Ebola fighters consist of “the people in the field, the special forces of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the Christian medical-relief workers of Samaritan’s Purse and many others from all over the world [who] fought side by side with local doctors and nurses, ambulance drivers and burial teams,” to keep the disease at bay.

TIME has unveiled five different covers to celebrate various Ebola fighters who each represent a group: Ebola survivor Dr. Kent Brantly, Dr. Jerry Brown, nurse aide and survivor Salome Karwah, MSF volunteer health promoter Ella Watson-Stryker, and ambulance team supervisor and survivor Foday Galla.

Giving the reason for the choice, Gibbs states that “the rest of the world can sleep at night because a group of men and women are willing to stand and fight.”

“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,” the editor adds.

Nominees for this year’s award included the Chibok Girls, who were kidnapped by Boko Haram in April, the Ferguson protesters, who took to the streets to register their anger against the killing of unarmed black teenager, Michael Brown, Pope Francis and US President Barack Obama among others.

monjola sotubo