konknaijaboy | On 11, Dec 2014

Time magazine has named “Ebola fighters” as its Person of the Year for their “tireless acts of courage and mercy.”

“Ebola is a war, and a warning,” Time editor Nancy Gibbs writes in announcing the magazine’s choice for most influential newsmaker of 2014. “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.”

The Ebola outbreak struck West Africa this year, mainly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia before spreading to Nigeria. It has claimed more than 6,000 lives, according to the World Health Organization.

The United States was swept up in the outcry over Ebola when a Liberian national, Thomas Eric Duncan, became the first Ebola patient diagnosed with the disease on U.S. soil.

Duncan, who contracted the disease in Liberia before traveling to the U.S., died in a Dallas hospital in October. Two nurses who treated him were infected, but recovered.

Continue reading HERE