World's 'Oldest Person' Dies in Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan's oldest citizen, who might have been the oldest person in the world, has died.
Sakhan Dosova, who celebrated her 130th birthday in March, became unwell on May 8 and passed away.
If her stated age is correct, she would have been 16 years older than the person previously thought to be the oldest.
In an interview with RFE/RL in March, Dosova had complained how pitiful her pension was and about her general living conditions.
Shortly afterwards, local authorities in the Kazakh city of Qaraghandy provided Dosova with a two-roomed apartment for free.
She moved to the new apartment 19 days before her death.
Dosova lived in a small town of Prishakhtinsk, in central Kazakhstan, had 11 children and 37 grandchildren and great grandchildren.
According to Nuken Alkeshova, her granddaughter who took care of her, the last national census several years ago revealed that her grandmother was the oldest citizen in the country -- and if true, the oldest citizen in the world by 16 years.
Alkeshova put her longevity down to eating cottage cheese and not eating sweets, and in an interview with RFE/RL's Kazakh Service certainly doesn't put it down to the $110 a month state pension she received.
It's incredibly difficult to deny or support her claim. Dosova has both a Soviet-era passport and Kazakh identification card.
In the Russian and Soviet empires, the combination of non-Russian speaking locals and non-Kazakh speaking provincial officials meant bureaucratic errors were common.
Because of the distances involved in getting from remote parts of the steppe to regional capitals, documents like birth certificates were often processed every few years in mass batches thus widening the margins of bureaucratic error.
That's not to take anything away from Mrs Dosova though, who was clearly a remarkable lady.
In an interview with RFE/RL in March 2009, Dosova said she hoped RFE/RL correspondents wouldn't see what she saw in her long life and wanted the Kazakh authorities to realize how pitiful her pension was.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)
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