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

17/1/2025 6:09

Two months away from

what she says is her 120th birthday, Deolira Gliceria Pedro da

Silva, a great-grandmother from the state of Rio de Janeiro in

Brazil is rushing to be recognized as the world’s oldest living

person by the Guinness World Records.



The institution currently features another Brazilian, Inah

Canabarro Lucas, a nun from the southern state of Rio Grande do

Sul as the oldest living person at 116 years, but Deolira’s

family and doctors are confident that she will soon take the

religious woman’s 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 Deolira’s granddaughter Doroteia Ferreira da

Silva, who is half her age.



The documents show that Pedro da Silva was born on March

10th 1905 in the rural area of Porciuncula, a small town in the

state of Rio. She now lives in a colorfully painted house in

Itaperuna, where her two granddaughters Doroteia, 60, and Lidia

Ferreira da Silva, 64, take care of her.



The grandmother 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 geriatric doctor Juair de Abreu

Pereira, who checks up on Pedro da Silva frequently and is

assisting her family in the process with Guinness World

Records.



In a statement, Guinness said it couldn't confirm receiving

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 twenty years ago

destroyed most of Deolira’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, Pedro da Silva is certainly

older than 100 years, according to Mateus Vidigal, a researcher

at 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 organizations,” Vidigal said, referring to

vetting institutions such as the Guinness World Records.



Pedro Silva’s healthy diet and sleeping habits are key

to her longevity, according to Dr. Pereira. To this day, she has

a good interaction with her family and likes eating bananas.



“I wish I could get to her age and be like that,” Ferreira

da Silva, her granddaughter, said. “While we have high blood

pressure and diabetes, she does not have any of that.”