President joins party for world’s oldest woman
A woman claiming to be the world’s oldest person celebrated her 126th birthday over the weekend in Dominica.
Elizabeth Israel puts her longevity to eating naturally grown food.
‘‘I grew up eating foods grown without chemical fertiliser,’’ she said from her home on the former British colony.
Miss Israel was born in 1875 in the town of Portsmouth on the Caribbean island, according to birth and baptismal records at the local Catholic church. She has always lived in the fishing town on a mountain-ringed bay.
Israel known as Ma Pampo hosted Dominica’s President Vernon Shaw, Prime Minister Pierre Charles and his Cabinet at her home for a birthday party broadcast over the radio.
Israel was never married. She had one child who died when he was 17. In recent years, she began using a wheelchair.
Dominica’s government said it will try to have Israel’s birth records reviewed and convince the Guinness Book of World Records to list her as the world’s oldest person.
The oldest person ever with an authenticated birth record was Jeanne Calment of France, who died on August 4, 1997 at the age of 122.
Last year, Maria do Carmo Jeronimo, a former slave whose lack of a birth certificate prevented her recognition as the world’s oldest woman, died in Itajuba, Brazil. Church records listed her age as 129.
