For the 2014 Person of the Year, TIME Magazine honors “The Ebola Fighters.” This issue is published with five different covers, each featuring an Ebola Fighter who has worked on the ground in West Africa.
From the magazine:
TIME photographed four subjects for the cover in Monrovia, Liberia: Dr. Jerry Brown, who is on the front cover, is 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; and Foday Gallah, an ambulance supervisor and Ebola survivor in Monrovia. For the fifth cover, TIME photographed Dr. Kent Brantly, who was running an Ebola treatment center in Monrovia when he became the first American to be infected.
More about the photographs, and the people they capture.
Highlights from the profiles:
CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden: “When the cases first hit, we sent in a team, and our team felt that they could control it. But there was some friction with WHO, which I had to get involved in. Essentially, people thought it was going to be controlled, and they didn’t want us there. So I had to tell WHO, ‘Let our team in, this is ridiculous.’ They wanted to do it themselves. There was resentment. They didn’t want to feel like they were dependent on the CDC. We left, and then Ebola came roaring back.”
MSF President Joanne Liu: “I remember very well the WHO saying the outbreak was under control, and it took us awhile to convince them that it was not. The wake-up call came when volunteers from Samaritan’s Purse were infected in late July. Suddenly, Ebola wasn’t such a distant reality for the Western world.”
Nurse Amber Vinson: “It was hard to see a lot of the things they were saying in the news. It was emotionally taxing. The media was disappointing in some ways, because it promotes fear.”
Nurse Nina Pham: “I replay it over and over again in my head how I could have gotten infected. I did everything that was recommended. It was just a shock when my chief nursing officer and a CDC officer came to see me in their full protective equipment. I knew it was not good.”
Caregiver Salome Karwah: “I was in the treatment center for four weeks [and] four days. Really, what made me survive is the support from the nurses. The support from the psychosocial [team] also really helped me…. They were looking for survivors to come and work [at the MSF clinic]. I make it my duty to come. The more I interact with people, the more I will forget about my sad story. The more I share my story with people, the more I will get strong, strong, strong and stronger.”
Dr. Jerry Brown: “When it all started and we had a treatment unit set up, my wife did warn me not to enter the unit. So I didn’t tell her. I had been in the unit two weeks without her knowing…. A few days later she noticed changes in the color of my boxers from the chlorine solution used for disinfection when leaving the unit. She said, ‘Ah, what is this?’ I had no option but to confess. We talked about it for some time, and then she accepted it. What she said was, ‘I can’t stop you. I realize this is something you like, so I am not going to stop you. But just be careful.’”
Emory Univ. Hospital’s Dr. Bruce Ribner: “Early on in the outbreak, I knew there were people in Africa who had Ebola, and I knew there were Americans there. I also knew that if they were transferred back to the U.S., there was a high likelihood that they would look at us. Our primary mission is to support CDC workers. But I was not thinking about a civilian until I got that phone call [about Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol].”
Dr. Kent Brantly: “Shortly after I arrived at Emory, [my wife] Amber called from a phone outside my room. I don’t remember that conversation, I was so delirious, but she said to me, “We watched you walk off that ambulance.” I said, ‘You were watching me?’ And she said, ‘Oh, Kent. The whole world was watching you.’”
Public Health Educator Ella Watson-Stryker: “Guinea broke my heart. I was not prepared for the level of mortality. I wasn’t prepared to watch entire families die. I wasn’t prepared to watch entire villages die.”
Nurse Kaci Hickox: "I have witnessed the devastation Ebola causes and have personally experienced the stigma that fear of this disease brings. I do want to go back to West Africa, but for now, I’m taking things day by day."
Ambulance Supervisor Foday Gallah: “I am going to get on that ambulance. I am going to every nook and cranny of the capital city, pick up whatsoever Ebola patient and take them to the treatment unit, and give them words of hope, of encouragement. And try to educate people about Ebola.”
