TIME’s Person Of The Year Honors Doctors Fighting Ebola

TIME Magazine’s person of the year is actually a group of people this time—specifically the men and women who helped fight the Ebola outbreak earlier this year. Those on the variant TIME covers are Dr. Jerry Brown, a medical director and surgeon in Monrovia, Liberia; Salome Karwah, caregiver at the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) clinic in Monrovia; Dr. Kent Brantly, a physician with Samaritan’s Purse; Ella Watson-Stryker, health promoter with MSF; and Foday Gallah, 37, ambulance supervisor in Monrovia. The pictures were taken by Jackie Nickerson and Bryan Schutmaat who were on the ground during much of the outbreak, and witnessed a great deal of the small and large contributions and sacrifices made by the “Ebola fighters” as they have come to be known.

The stories Nickerson told about Gallah and Karwah were particularly moving.

“Foday’s story is heartbreaking,” Nickerson said. “He contracted Ebola when he was trying to comfort a young kid, who was incredibly distressed. ‘I just had to pick the kid up and comfort him,’ he told us. Of course, he got vomit all over him and that’s how he got Ebola. He’s the shinning example of what the right thing to do is. He’s a shinning example that we should all try to follow. He really did touch me with his story. I don’t usually like to use the word hero, but I have to use it here.”

“[Salome’s] an [Ebola] survivor and an incredibly brave woman. When we met Salome, she was a typical young woman, she was all dressed up, she had jewelry on and she was a little nervous about having her picture taken. But then, she put her scrubs…she became very calm, a little bit introverted. She showed me where she worked in the Médecins Sans Frontières /Doctors Without Borders (MSF) compound. We just wanted a plain background, so we came out of the dressing room and [this shot was taken] right there.”

The magazine features stories about the five pictured heroes and their attempts at treating those infected. While almost none of them had anything in common, the one factor they did was their reasons for going into the Liberian hot zone–it was the right thing to do. While they all managed to survive the ordeal, many did not, and that was partially because of the lack of equipment. “[Dr. Brown] invited us to go into the Ebola Treatment Unit, into the reception area where he gets dressed. It was a very simple, bare room. It had a single light bulb, and I just thought it captured the atmosphere and gravity of what they were doing.”

As always, many were considered for the Person of the Year cover; this year’s frontrunners included Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, Roger Goodell, Taylor Swift, Jack Ma, Tim Cook, Malala Yousafzai and Masoud Barzani. With the Ebola fighters taking the title, this is the fourth time since 2002 that TIME has chosen a group rather than a single person. In 2002, TIME chose the Whistleblowers (who reported on multiple governmental and economic malfeasance); 2005 was the Good Samaritans (philanthropists like Bill and Melinda Gates); 2006 the universal “we” were chosen in representation of the content created on the Internet; and in 2011 TIME chose “the protestor” (mentioning specifically the Arab Spring, the Indignants Movement, Tea Party movement and Occupy Movement–as well as protests in throughout eastern and western Europe.

While highlighting these five Ebola fighters on their covers, within the magazine itself, TIME editors made it clear that while five people were pictured, the usage of “Ebola fighter” is meant to be all inclusive, incorporating health care workers who helped fight the spread of the disease, such as ambulance attendants, burial parties.