World’s oldest person, Gertrude Weaver dies at 116

Gertrude Weaver

Days after becoming the world’s oldest person, American Gertrude Weaver has died at the age of 116, US media reported.

Weaver died Monday morning of complications from pneumonia, reports said.

Weaver passed away at the Silver Oaks Health and Rehabilitation Center in the southern state of Arkansas, local TV station KATV reported.

Weaver was pronounced the world’s oldest person on April 1 after the death of 117-year-old Misao Okawa in Japan.

Weaver would have turned 117 on July 4.

She was aware of her unique status, the center said, according to the Washington Post.

“She knew that she was the oldest person in the world, and she enjoyed that distinction greatly. She enjoyed every phone call, every letter, every comment. Everything was read to her,” Kathy Langley, administrator of the Center, told the Post.

Weaver was born in 1898, the youngest of six children, and was the daughter of sharecroppers.

She once told an Arkansas newspaper that her longevity was due among other things to “treating everybody good,” the Post said.

She had four children and is survived by a son who turns 94 on Tuesday, the Post said.

In Janunary the world’s oldest person,who was Misao Okawa, died in Japan, a month after celebrating her 117th birthday.

The nursing home where she lived in Osaka said she breathed her last around 7am (2200 GMT Tuesday).

On the occasion of her birthday early December, Okawa, a mother of three, grandmother of four and great-grandmother of six, was one of only a handful of people still alive who had been born in the 19th century.

Her birth on March 5, 1898 predated the Wright brothers’ first powered human flight by five years, she was already a teenager when World War I broke out and in her 70s by the time of the first moon landing.

When she turned 114, she was officially recognised by Guinness World Records as the oldest woman in the globe.

Japan, known for the longevity of its people, is home to the world’s oldest man — Sakari Momoi, who celebrated his 112th birthday in February.

In 2013, life expectancy for women in Japan was 86.61, the longest in the world followed by Hong Kong women, according to the health ministry.

For men it was 80.21, the fourth longest, after men in Hong Kong, Iceland and Switzerland."