Former US President Jimmy Carter enters hospice care

Washington, Feb 18 (EFE).- Jimmy Carter, at 98 the longest-lived person to have held the office of president of the United States, is beginning hospice care at his home, The Carter Center said 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 Atlanta-based NGO he founded with wife Rosalynn 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,” the statement concluded.

The former president survived brain cancer in 2015, but required surgery four years later to relieve pressure on his brain.

Carter subsequently suffered a fractured pelvis in a fall, limiting his mobility, and he has remained largely out of the public eye since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, though he has continued to speak out on current events.

A nuclear engineer by training, Carter served in the US Navy and was a successful peanut farmer before being elected governor of his native Georgia in 1971.

He won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976 and went on to narrowly defeat Republican incumbent Gerald Ford.

His years in the White House were marked by economic problems at home and by the crisis arising from the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran by Iranians angry over Carter’s decision to allow the ousted shah of Iran to enter the US for medical treatment.

But Carter won acclaim for brokering the 1978 Camp David Peace Accord between Israel and Egypt.

After losing his 1980 bid for re-election to Ronald Reagan, he remained engaged through the Carter Center, which is active in democracy-promotion and public-health efforts, and through involvement with housing non-profit Habitat for Humanity.

In 2002, Carter was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize.

The former president has written more than 20 books. EFE mgr/dr