Francisca Celsa dos Santos, the third oldest person in the world and the first in Brazil, died at the age of 116 at her home in Fortaleza on October 5, according to one of her granddaughters. Her death, reported this Monday in the Brazilian national press, occurred 17 days before she turned 117. Mrs. Dos Santos, who worked as an embroidery artisan, died of pneumonia after managing to avoid the pandemic of the covid and a century ago, when I was a teenager, the Spanish flu.
Dos Santos, born on October 22, 1904, was recognized as a supercentennial by the Gerontology Research Group (GRG), a group of 500 people spread across the globe who tracks the press and conducts a world ranking of longest living people. It is headed by a Japanese woman of almost 119 years, followed by a French woman of 117 and in third place another Brazilian, also 116 years old, has entered.
On the eve of her death, the artisan was recognized by the Guinness Book of the records as the longest-lived in Latin America, according to her granddaughter Fernanda Celsa. She was buried in a municipal cemetery.
“This year did not happen” he used to repeat from the 80s, his family has said, who redoubled the care of the elderly woman due to the coronavirus, which has caused havoc in Brazil and the death of 600,000 people. He was in good health for most of his life. She was lucid until five years ago and could walk until almost a decade ago.
He celebrated his last birthday, 116, last October with a cake that one of his granddaughters brought him to bed. He was able to fulfill his wish to remain at home until the end because he hated hospitals.
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“We protected her a lot (from the coronavirus), but they were building a supermarket in front of her house and, with all that dust, she got pneumonia. It got better and worse, but unfortunately yesterday it left us, “he told Northeast Newspaper the granddaughter who acted as family spokesperson.
Ms. Dos Santos was born in Cascavel, on the outskirts of Fortaleza, a regional capital in the impoverished northeast of Brazil. At age 47, he went to a notary to register, according to Folha de S. Paulo.
The most serious disease he suffered was stomach cancer when he was 80 years old. Her family says that she was treated at home with natural remedies. One of his grandsons, a doctor, was in charge of supervising his health in recent times. The mother of six children, three of whom survive, she was a widow for more than four decades.
Antonia da Cruz, born on June 13, 1905 and living in the State of Bahia, is now the oldest Brazilian and the third in the world.
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