Meet the verified world oldest woman

'It's about hard work, long walks and lots of love': Born in 1897, 'world's oldest woman' reveals secret of long life - as she turns 119

• Family of Celina del Carmen Olea's claim she is world's oldest woman aged 118
• Argentine Celina is mother of 12 and grandma to 'many more' she says  
• Lives in Buenos Aires slum with son Alberto, adopted daughter Gladys, 48
• She puts her long life down to not smoking and 'filling her life with love'
• Discovery comes days after Brazilian civil servants find 131-year-old man

The family of a pensioner in Argentina claim she is the world's oldest living woman – as she prepares to celebrate her 119th birthday.

According to her identity card and birth certificate, Celina del Carmen Olea was born on February 15, 1897.

From her home in the slums of from Buenos Aires, she puts her longevity down to not smoking, walking everywhere, hard work and, she says most importantly, 'filling her life with love'.

And there can be no argument that is what Celina has done, having had 12 children and adopted and fostered many more children over the years.

She has lost count of the number of grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren and great-great-great grandchildren she has today.  

Some of her children went to school, while others went to work on the family's chicken farm in rural Tucuman province. 

Born on a farm three years before the beginning of the 20th century, Celina who was 17 at the beginning of the First World War, moved to Buenos Aires in the 1960s with her husband Jose Inocencio Segovio, who died shortly after the move.

The last time Celina got together with her whole family was last February for her 118th birthday.

These days she spends her days quietly at home in Buenos Aires with her son Alberto.

One of her adopted daughters Gladys, 48, lives around the corner and dotes on the woman who took her in when she was four days old. 

Despite her years, wheelchair-bound Celina is in remarkably good health and takes no medicine apart from cream for cysts around her eyes.

'She talks to me about her siblings, my father, my brothers and sisters, but they are all dead,' Alberto said. 

'Up until a couple of years ago she walked and cooked, soup was her speciality,' he added. 

Her story comes just a week after officials in Brazil made the astonishing claim that they had discovered a 131-year-old man after making routine visits to check he was still alive, and therefore eligible for his pension.

Civil servants posted Joao Coelho de Souza's photo and birth certificate online, which says he was born in the city of Meruoca in Ceara nearly 2,000 miles to the east of Acre on March 10, 1884.

Brazilian media reported that Joao lives with his wife, 69 years his junior, and three children.

His daughter, Cirlene Souza, is only 30, which would mean that Joao was 101 when she was born.