THE Ebola fighters who were named as TIME magazine's Person of the Year 2014 on Wednesday were chosen due to their 'exceptionally great amount of courage, kindness and bravery.'
Meanwhile, to strengthen the fight against a further spread of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in some West African countries and across the world, the government of Japan has released emergency grant of 820 million yen ($8.5 million) to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP).
In a related development, it was alleged yesterday that the Sudanese authorities denied 26 Nigerians entry into their country over suspicion that they were possibly infected by the dreaded Ebola Virus Disease.
The TIME's Managing Editor, Nancy Gibbs, stated this Wednesday on the Today show, adding that the Ebola Fighters beat the Ferguson protesters to the prestigious title, which honours the 'person' who most influenced the news, for better or for worse throughout the year.
In third place came Russian President Vladimir Putin, followed by Masoud Barzani, the acting president of the Iraqi Kurdish Region, and English teacher-turned-Alibaba founder Jack Ma.
Gibbs also revealed five covers featuring different Ebola fighters across West Africa, including doctors, nurses and ambulance drivers.
Dr Kent Brantly, an American Ebola survivor who contracted the virus while working with patients in Liberia, features on one of the covers. "I think it's fitting that we acknowledge that most Ebola fighters are themselves West Africans," he told the Today show. "It's an honour for me to have been considered part of that group."
The covers also feature Foday Gallah, an ambulance driver who survived the infection, Médecins Sans Frontières nurse Salome Karwah and Dr Jerry Brown, a Liberian surgeon who turned his hospital's chapel into the country's first Ebola treatment center.
In an article for TIME, Gibbs detailed the magazine's reasons for its choice, explaining that this year, 'an outbreak turned into an epidemic' across Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, before traveling to Europe and the U.S.
"Anyone willing to treat Ebola victims ran the risk of becoming one," she wrote.
But at a time when there seemed no end to the disease, which has killed 7,000 people in West Africa, a group stepped forward despite the dangers and the incompetencies of their governments.
"The global health system is nowhere close to strong enough to keep us safe from infectious disease," Gibbs wrote. 'The rest of the world can sleep at night because a group of men and women are willing to stand and fight.
"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, "she added
Each year, the magazine names the 'person' who most influenced the news, for better or for worse.
An honour: Time Magazine's person of the year since 2000
2000: George W. Bush
2001: Rudolph Giuliani, who was New York City's Mayor on 9/11
2002: The Enron Whistleblowers
2003: The American soldier
2004: George W. Bush
2005: The Good Samaritans - Bono and Bill Gates
2006: You - represented by the Internet
2007: Vladimir Putin
2008: Barack Obama
2009: Ben Bernanke
2010: Mark Zuckerberg
2011: The Protester
2012: Barack Obama
Last year, the Pope narrowly beat pop star Miley Cyrus to the title for his transformative changes to the tone of the Catholic Church on social issues.
This year, the runner up was the Ferguson Protesters, who 'built a movement that revived a dormant national conversation about race and justice', according to TIME.
The protesters first took to the streets in August after 18-year-old Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, was shot dead in broad daylight by police officer Darren Wilson.
Japan also seconded an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) and dispatched a Japanese medical expert through WHO.
According to a statement from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, "through this emergency grant aid, a total of 700,000 sets of personal protective equipment (PPE) will be sent and distributed to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Mali, and the technical support will be provided for infection prevention and control activities of medical staff in the affected countries.
"In addition, as part of Japan's contribution of human resources, an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with a medical license, Dr. Shiro Konuma, will be seconded to the UNMEER until the end of February 2015.
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"He will be working as Senior Adviser on Ebola to the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General. Japan also decided to newly dispatch one medical expert to Sierra Leone via the World Health Organization for a period of approximately one month from December 14."
One of the affected Nigerians, Hauwa'u Ibrahim Bakori, a second year student of Pharmacy at Al Ahfad University for Women, Omdurman, told an online medium that she and 25 others were denied entry after arriving Khartoum Airport on Wednesday.
She added that they were detained, and then deported to Nigeria yesterday.
Bakori is in her second year at the Sudanese university and had travelled to Nigeria on holidays.
She further claimed they had travelled to Khartoum via an Ethiopian Airline flight ET 910 from Abuja on Wednesday, but on arrival in Khartoum, authorities seized their passports, and arranged boarding passes for them to return to Nigeria.
"They were not tested for Ebola," Bakori said.
However, neither the Sudanese authorities nor Nigeria's Foreign Ministry could be reached to comment on the issue at the time of this report.
