The chairman of the Central Election Commission, Mazahir Panahov, announced yesterday that the oldest voter in Azerbaijan is 136-year-old Azizova Tamara Ali gizi. She was registered in Lankaran district, 78th DSK, polling station No. 38. Tamara Azizova was born in 1890 in the Baku Governorate of the Russian Empire.
Modern.az conducted a small investigation on this topic and determined that Tamara Azizova is the oldest resident in the world. Currently, the oldest resident in the world is considered to be British Ethel Keterhem. She lives in Surrey, England, and was born in 1909. She is currently 116 years old.
This means that 136-year-old Tamara Azizova in Azerbaijan is the officially confirmed oldest person in the world and is 20 years ahead of her "follower".
International gerontology organizations primarily prefer data from Europe, Western countries, and East Asian states regarding longevity. The reason for this is the earlier formation of archive systems in these countries, complete birth registrations, and active work of research institutes on this topic. In countries like Japan, France, Great Britain, and the USA, information about long-lived people is documented for years and verified by international organizations.
However, this does not mean that there are no long-lived people in other regions of the world. Especially in the Caucasus, Central and Southeast Asian countries, Africa, and remote areas of South America, there is a lot of information about long-lived people. It's just that a large part of these individuals remain outside international statistics. The main reasons for this are old registration systems, lack of archives, and international attention being mainly focused on developed countries.
Azerbaijan has historically been known as a country of long-livers. Information about people over 100 years old in regions such as Lerik, Yardimli, Lankaran, Guba-Gusar, Nakhchivan, etc., has often been on the agenda since the Soviet era. Especially clean air, natural nutrition, rural lifestyle, and low stress are cited as the main reasons for longevity.
Experts believe that international confirmation of information about individuals over 130 years old is an extremely difficult process. For this, birth certificates, state archives, census documents, and official records from various periods of a person's life are compared. Even the smallest inconsistency can prevent that person from being recognized as a record.
Therefore, the information about 136-year-old Tamara Azizova registered in Azerbaijan has aroused both interest and discussion. Nevertheless, one point does not go unnoticed - although the main attention in world longevity statistics is directed towards European, North American, and East Asian countries, a part of real long-livers has remained outside the attention of the international system for years. The case of Tamara Azizova is the most striking example of this.
