TIME names its Person of the Year: Ebola Fighters

It was the year when an outbreak became an epidemic.

When governments were caught unprepared.

When “anyone willing to treat Ebola victims ran the risk of becoming one,” according to TIME Editor Nancy Gibbs.

That’s why TIME Magazine has named Ebola Fighters its 2014 Person of the Year.

“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,” Gibbs said.

TIME made the announcement Wednesday morning on its website.

The magazine’s Person of the Year issue will feature five covers, each with a different Ebola Fighter who has worked on the ground in West Africa. Here’s how the magazine described those fighters:

• Dr. Jerry Brown, a Liberian surgeon who turned his hospital’s chapel into one of the country’s first Ebola treatment centers.

• Salome Karwah, an Ebola survivor who lost both her parents to the disease and now counsels patients in Liberia.

• Ella Watson-Stryker, an American health educator for MSF who has been helping fight Ebola in West Africa since March.

• Foday Gallah, an ambulance supervisor and Ebola survivor in Monrovia.

• Dr. Kent Brantly, who was running an Ebola treatment center in Monrovia when he became the first American to be infected.

Others interviewed for its cover story include CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden and Nina Pham, the Dallas nurse who contracted Ebola after caring for Thomas Eric Duncan, the first patient diagnosed in the United States.

This year’s runners-up for TIME Person of the Year are the Ferguson protesters, Vladmimir Putin, Massoud Barzani and Jack Ma.

Last year’s TIME Person of the Year was Pope Francis.