Ebola Healthcare Workers Honored as “Person of the Year”

Healthcare workers fighting the Ebola outbreak in West Africa have been named by Time magazine as Person of the Year for 2014.

The issue has five different versions, with caregivers featured on the covers including two doctors, a nurse, an ambulance driver, and a health care worker who were specifically singled out by the editors for praise. Among those honored is Kent Brantly, MD, the American doctor who contracted Ebola while caring for patients in Liberia. He has since recovered from the virus, but 349 other healthcare workers have died after contracting the disease, which decimated 6,330 people so far, most of them in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea.

“It's just a huge honor; receiving such recognition brings on mixed emotions,” said Dr. Brantly. “This is not simply a historic event that we're looking back on; it's still happening. Ebola fighters are not just people who did something brave and courageous. They are still in the trenches fighting that war as we speak.”

“I could not be prouder of the brave men and women who have committed themselves to this effort in a foreign land,” said White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, speaking for US President Barack Obama. “But we must not forget that in order to bring this epidemic under control on the front lines, indeed the only way to prevent additional cases here in the United States, we need more of these medical professionals.”

Related Links:
Link to Time issue