The man who was the most obese person in the world before losing nearly 400 kilos through weight loss surgery has successfully fought another battle for his health.
Juan Pedro Franco of Aguascalientes has now survived the coronavirus as well, according to a report by Agence France-Presse.
Back in 2016, the 32-year-old weighed 595 kilos, the size of an average male polar bear, certifying him as the world’s fattest man by Guinness World Records.
But that was before he traveled to Guadalajara, Jalisco, and met Dr. José Antonio Castañeda, who put him on a Mediterranean diet that emphasizes vegetables and fruits and then performed two operations. After gastric sleeve, gastric bypass, and gastric band surgeries, Franco lost nearly 400 kilos and now weighs in at 208.
And although he suffers from comorbidities including diabetes, hypertension and chronic pulmonary disease due to his weight, he managed to shake off the coronavirus after testing positive a month ago.
“It is complicated because it is a very aggressive disease. I had a headache, body aches, my air was gone, a fever. I was a very at-risk person,” Franco said of his bout with the disease.
Franco considered that the complex treatment he underwent to lose weight helped him defeat Covid-19 because his diabetes and hypertension are now under control.
But Franco’s mother and caregiver, María de Jesús Salas, was not so lucky. The 66-year-old, who also had diabetes and hypertension, died of the disease after being intubated.
“Just because you are a thin person without comorbidities, you are not exempt from complications. All bodies behave differently when faced with the disease,” Franco said.
Mexico has one of the highest rates in the world for obesity in both children and adults, which has been an obstacle in the fight against Covid-19. One in four of the 75,439 coronavirus deaths in Mexico occurred among people who were overweight, and a fifth of the 715,457 who have been infected are obese.
