Time Magazine Unveils Its 2014 Person of the Year

Time magazine named the people fighting the Ebola outbreak in West Africa as its 2014 Person of the Year.

The Ebola Fighters are TIME’s Person of the Year for 2014. https://t.co/0s4PQnYYeA #TIMEPOY pic.twitter.com/lnj4OLjMc1

— TIME.com (@TIME) December 10, 2014

From Time Editor Nancy Gibbs:

Governments weren’t equipped to respond; the World Health Organization was in denial and snarled in red tape. First responders were accused of crying wolf, even as the danger grew. But 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 fought side by side with local doctors and nurses, ambulance drivers and burial teams.

[…]

Ebola is a war, and a warning. 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. 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 Ferguson protesters came in at No. 2 on Time's list, followed by Russian President Vladimir Putin at No. 3; Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraq's Kurdish region, at No. 4; and Jack Ma, chairman of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, at No. 5.