Relatives of a 103-year-old Pakistani man and doctors said he had recovered from Covid-19 to become among the oldest survivors of the disease in the world, overcoming difficulties in a country with poor health care.
Aziz Abdel-Alim, a resident of a village in the mountainous northern Chitral region, exited last week from an emergency treatment center after tests showed he had been infected in early July.
"We were concerned about him because of his age, but he was not upset at all," Ahmed al-Alim's son Ahmed told Reuters by phone from his village near the Pakistani border with China and Afghanistan.
Ahmed quoted his father as saying that he had gone through a lot in his life, and that he was not afraid of the virus, but that he was not comfortable, however, to remain in isolation.
Ahmed, a carpenter more than 50 years old, said that his father was a carpenter until the seventies, and three wives and nine sons and daughters died in his life, adding that his father was separated from his fourth wife and he is currently married from the fifth.
Dr. Sardar Nawaz, a senior medical official at the Aga Khan Health Service Emergency Center, told Reuters on Friday that Abdul Alim also needed moral and psychological support during the isolation and treatment period.