Former US president Jimmy Carter will “spend his remaining time at home” receiving hospice care, it has been announced.
The 98-year-old, who was president for one term between 1977 and 1981, made the decision after a series of hospital stays, the Carter Center announced on Saturday.
“After a series of short hospital stays, former US president Jimmy Carter today decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention,” the Carter Center said in a statement.
“He has the full support of his family and his medical team. The Carter family asks for privacy during this time and is grateful for the concern shown by his many admirers.”
Mr Carter, a Democrat, became the 39th US president when he defeated his predecessor Gerald Ford in 1976. He served a single term and was defeated by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.
He is the oldest living former president in US history, and still lives in a modest home in the rural town of Plains, Georgia, a two-and-a-half-hour drive south of Atlanta.
Mr Carter had a small cancerous mass removed from his liver in 2015. And in 2016, he announced that he would need no further treatment as his cancer had been eliminated by an experimental drug.
The other living former presidents are Donald Trump, 76; Barack Obama, 61; George W Bush, 76; and Bill Clinton, 76.
Mr Carter’s grandson, former Georgia state senator Jason Carter, took to Twitter to say that his grandparents were “at peace”.
“I saw both of my grandparents yesterday. They are at peace and – as always – their home is full of love. Thank you all for your kind words,” he tweeted.
The former president, a lifelong Baptist, told a church Sunday school congregation in 2019 that he was “at ease with death” following his cancer diagnosis, reported CBS News.
“I obviously prayed about it. I didn’t ask God to let me live, but I just asked God to give me a proper attitude toward death. And I found that I was absolutely and completely at ease with death,” he said, according to the news organisation.
“It didn’t really matter to me whether I died or lived. I have, since that time, been absolutely confident that my Christian faith includes complete confidence in life after death. So, I’m going to live again after I die – don’t know what form I’ll take, or anything.”
Mr Carter was a peanut farmer and a US Navy lieutenant before going into politics and serving one term as the governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975.
He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his peace efforts around the world, and is a long-time supporter of and volunteer for Habitat for Humanity.
