Person of the Year 2014: Honoring the "warriors" against Ebola

Health workers fighting the Ebola outbreak have been chosen by TIME magazine as Person of the Year 2014.

On Wednesday's Today show, TIME managing editor Nancy Gibbs announced the news, saying that those who fought the worst Ebola outbreak in history deserved to be chosen for their "extraordinary courage, kindness and bravery."

Ebola workers honored. (Source: DM)

Gibbs also unveiled five new magazine covers, featuring five medical workers who served in West Africa, including a doctor, a nurse and an ambulance driver.

American doctor Kent Brantly, who contracted the virus while treating patients in Liberia and survived, was also featured on one of the covers.

“I think it’s fitting that most of the Ebola fighters are West Africans,” Brantly said. “I feel honored to be one of them.”

Other covers include images of Foday Gallah, an ambulance driver who survived the virus, Doctors Without Borders nurse Salome Karwah, and Dr. Jerry Brown, a Liberian surgeon who turned his hospital chapel into the country's first Ebola treatment center.

In an article for TIME, Gibbs detailed the magazine’s reasoning for this year’s selection. “Anyone willing to treat Ebola victims risks becoming one,” Gibbs wrote. “The rest of the world can sleep soundly at night because a group of men and women are ready to stand up and fight back.”

“For their tireless work, filled with courage and compassion, for delaying the spread of the disease so the world could strengthen its defenses, for their risk-taking, for their perseverance, for their sacrifice and salvation, the Ebola fighters were chosen by TIME magazine as Person of the Year 2014.”

Each year, the magazine selects the most influential person in the world news system.

This year, Ebola health workers beat out protesters in Ferguson to claim the title. Third place went to Russian President Vladimir Putin, followed by Masoud Barzani, acting president of Iraqi Kurdistan, and fifth was former English teacher and Alibaba founder Jack Ma./.

According to VNA