Jimmy Carter enters palliative care

Former President Jimmy Carter, who at 98 is the oldest living president in US history, has decided to forgo all medical treatment and spend his final days at home with his family, announcing Saturday the Carter Center.

The center said in a statement that “after a series of short hospital stays,” Carter elected to “receive palliative care instead of additional medical intervention” during his “remaining time.”

“He has the full support of his family and his medical team,” the center said. “The Carter family asks for privacy during this time and is grateful for the interest shown by its many admirers.”

The Carter Center did not give a reason for the recent hospital stays. In 2015, Carter was diagnosed with skin cancer melanoma, which had spread to her brain and liver. After treatment, tests showed he was cancer free.

Carter, sworn in as the 39th US president in January 1977 and serving one term, turned 98 last year. Prior to that, George HW Bush, the 41st president, from 1989 to 1993, had been the oldest living president. Bush died in 2018 at the age of 94. Both men were born in 1924.

Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for what the organization behind the prize called “his decades of tireless effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights and to promote economic and social development”.

In 1982, he and his wife, Rosalynn, founded The Carter Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to these causes. He and the center are known for monitoring elections in foreign countries and fighting diseases in developing regions. Carter is also a longtime volunteer with Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit dedicated to ensuring people have affordable and safe homes.