A South African 116-year-old man, Fredie Blom has passed away as the world unofficial oldest man.
Blom is one of the survivors of the 1918 Spanish Flu is believed to be among the world’s oldest people died on Saturday in South Africa, his family said.
According to mb.com.ph, born on May 8 1904, Fredie Blom had “lived this long because of God’s grace,” he told AFP this year.
Guinness World Records lists the oldest currently living man as Briton Bob Weighton, aged 112, but South African media have described Blom as “unofficially” the world’s oldest.
Blom’s entire family was wiped out by the Spanish Flu pandemic when he was just a teenager.
But he himself survived and went on to raise the three children of his wife of 46 years, Jeanette, as his own, becoming grandfather to five over the years.
“He was a strong man, full of pride,” he added.
But within 3 days, his family saw him shrink “from a big man to a small person”.
Born in the rural town of Adelaide, tucked near the Great Winterberg mountain range of South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, Blom died at Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town.
His death was “not a COVID death at all, it’s normal natural death,” Naidoo said in reference to the coronavirus pandemic.
Source: mb.com.ph
