TIME magazine has named people fighting Ebola as its 2014 "Person of the Year." The Ebola fighters beat out finalists like The Ferguson protesters, Vladimir Putin, Massoud Barzani and Jack Ma.
This group of people was chosen "for their tireless acts of courage and mercy, for buying the world time to strengthen its defenses, for the risks they took and the lives they saved," said Nancy Gibbs, TIME's managing editor.
The magazine highlights a few specific people who have fought Ebola, including Kent Brantly, MD, the American missionary physician who contracted the virus in West Africa, was treated on U.S. soil and survived. Dr. Jerry Brown, a medical director of a hospital in Liberia that has treated countless Ebola patients, and Foday Gallah, an ambulance supervisor and Ebola survivor in Liberia, were also among those highlighted by TIME.
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is the largest in history, claiming more than 6,330 lives in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone since its start earlier this year and spreading to other nations, the U.S. included.