Ebola Fighters Named Time Person Of The Year

Doctors, nurses and others fighting Ebola have been named Time's 2014 Person of the Year, the magazine announced Wednesday, AP/AFP report.

In an article on the Time website, Editor Nancy Gibbs praised "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" who "fought side by side with local doctors and nurses, ambulance drivers and burial teams."

- 'Ebola is a war and a warning' -

Gibbs said governments were not equipped to respond to the crisis, the World Health Organization was in denial and snarled in red tape, and first responders were accused of crying wolf.

"This was a test of the world's ability to respond to potential pandemics, and it did not go well.

"It exposed corruption in African governments along with complacency in Western capitals and jealousy among competing bureaucrats," Gibbs wrote. 
"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 runners-up chosen by Time were protesters who took to the streets in the St Louis suburb of Ferguson to condemn the killing of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer.

Also shortlisted were Russian President Vladimir Putin, Massoud Barzani, president of Iraq's Kurdistan region, and China's richest man Jack Ma, founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba.

Pope Francis was 2013 person of the year.