119-year-old Brazilian woman stakes claim as world’s oldest person

RIO DE JANEIRO - Two months away from what she says is her 120th birthday, Mrs Deolira Gliceria Pedro da Silva, a great-grandmother from the state of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, is rushing to be recognised as the world’s oldest living person by Guinness World Records.

The institution currently features another Brazilian, Ms Inah Canabarro Lucas, a nun from the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, as the oldest living person at 116 years, but Mrs Pedro da Silva’s family and doctors are confident that she will soon take the title. 

“She is still not in the book, but she is the oldest in the world according to the documents we have on her, as I recently discovered,” said Mrs Pedro da Silva’s granddaughter, Ms Doroteia Ferreira da Silva, who is half her age. 

The documents show that Mrs Pedro da Silva was born on March 10, 1905, in the rural area of Porciuncula, a small town in the state of Rio.

She now lives in a colourfully painted house in Itaperuna, where her two granddaughters, Ms Doroteia Ferreira da Silva, 60, and Ms Lidia Ferreira da Silva, 64, take care of her. 

She is also supervised by doctors and researchers who are interested in how she outlived the average life expectancy in Brazil, which currently sits at 76.4 years, by more than four decades.

“Mrs Deolira, in 2025, will be 120 years old. She is in a good general state of health for her condition; she is not taking any medication,” said doctor of geriatric medicine Juair de Abreu Pereira, who checks up on Mrs Pedro da Silva frequently and is assisting her family in the process with Guinness World Records. 

In a statement, Guinness said it could not confirm receiving Mrs Pedro da Silva’s application, because it receives many from people around the world who claim to be the oldest living person.

Major floods in the region almost 20 years ago destroyed most of Mrs Pedro da Silva’s original documents, her doctor said. That may pose a challenge for the official recognition of her age. 

Even if her age is not precise, Mrs Pedro da Silva is certainly older than 100 years, according to researcher Mateus Vidigal of the University of Sao Paulo, who has studied her case as part of a project to understand the super elderly population of Brazil. 

“Mrs Deolira has not been excluded from the study, but there is this fragility which is the lack of documentation that is approved by those organisations,” Mr Vidigal said, referring to vetting institutions such as Guinness World Records.

Mrs Pedro da Silva’s healthy diet and sleeping habits are key to her longevity, according to Dr Pereira.

To this day, she has good interaction with her family and likes eating bananas. 

“I wish I could get to her age and be like that,” Ms Doroteia Ferreira da Silva, her granddaughter, said.

“While we have high blood pressure and diabetes, she does not have any of that.” REUTERS