Time Chooses “The Ebola Fighters” As Its “Person of the Year;” GUMC honors Ebola caregiver Dr. Daniel Lucey

WASHINGTON (Dec. 10, 2014) — Time has selected the “The Ebola Fighters” as the 2014 Person of the Year. Georgetown University Medical Center applauds this selection and honors one of its own Ebola fighters, Daniel Lucey, MD, MPH.

Lucey has spent several weeks in West Africa in the Ebola “hot zone” since summer. He volunteered in Sierra Leone training health care workers in the proper use of personal protective equipment. A month after returning from that work, he went back, this time to Liberia to treat patients in a Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) hospital.

In selecting the Ebola fighters, Time stated, “They risked and persisted, sacrificed and saved.” Editor Nancy Gibbs writes, “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.”

“Dan has selflessly shared his talents and expertise and put his life at risk to serve the people of West Africa at a time of great need,” says Howard J. Federoff, MD, PhD, executive vice president of GUMC. “His personal choice to volunteer in West Africa represents the Jesuit spirit. We commend his dedication and courage, and celebrate all Ebola fighters for their much deserved honor by Time.”

Lucey is adjunct professor of microbiology and immunology at Georgetown University Medical Center, and is a senior scholar at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown. A physician trained in infectious diseases and public health, Lucey has taught for 11 years at Georgetown on global emerging infectious diseases. He completed his infectious disease training and MPH at Harvard and worked in the US Public Health Service at the National Institutes of Health.

About Georgetown University Medical Center
Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) is an internationally recognized academic medical center with a three-part mission of research, teaching and patient care (through MedStar Health). GUMC’s mission is carried out with a strong emphasis on public service and a dedication to the Catholic, Jesuit principle of cura personalis — or “care of the whole person.” The Medical Center includes the School of Medicine and the School of Nursing & Health Studies, both nationally ranked; Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, designated as a comprehensive cancer center by the National Cancer Institute; and the Biomedical Graduate Research Organization, which accounts for the majority of externally funded research at GUMC including a Clinical and Translational Science Award from the National Institutes of Health.

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