The Carter Center said on Saturday that former President Jimmy Carter, who is 98 and the oldest president in American history, has decided not to get any more medical care. Instead, he will get hospice care at his home in Georgia.
In a statement posted on Twitter, the center said, “After a series of short hospital stays, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention.”
“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 center didn’t mention why he went to the hospital recently or decided to get hospice care. Mr. Carter has had several health problems in the past few years, including melanoma, a skin cancer that spread to his liver and brain, and several falls.
Jason Carter, one of Mr. Carter’s grandchildren and the head of the Carter Center’s board of trustees, said he had seen the former president and first lady on Friday.
He wrote on Twitter, “They are at peace and—as always—their home is full of love.”
Hospice care is care for people nearing the end of their lives and no longer need treatment. The main goal is to make them feel less pain and discomfort.
The former president and his 95-year-old wife live in a small ranch house in Plains, Georgia, that they built together in 1961.
Mr. Carter has fought illness and death for a long time. He has outlived two presidents who came after him and his vice president.
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In March 2019, he passed former President George H.W. Bush, who died in November 2018, to become the president who had lived the longest.
In 2015, Mr. Carter’s melanoma spread to his brain. He was praised for telling the public about it.
Even though he was getting treatment, he kept his promise and taught Sunday school at the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains. Within a few months, he told everyone he no longer had cancer.
At least three times in 2019, Mr. Carter fell and hurt himself. Once, he broke his hip; another time, he needed 14 stitches. Every time he fell, he got back up.
Shortly after one fall, he even showed up to help build a house for Habitat for Humanity. But lately, he has been leaving the public eye less and less, making fewer and fewer public appearances and statements.
He could not attend President Biden’s inauguration in January 2021, when former presidents usually get together.
However, Mr. Biden went to Plains, Georgia, in April 2021 to pay his respects. He was the first sitting president to visit Mr. Carter at his home in Georgia.
Last year, one of Mr. Carter’s last public acts was to file a brief in support of an appeal by environmental groups to overturn a court decision that let a gravel road be built through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.
He said the building would go against the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which he had signed into law. Last month, it was noted that he was still working on this problem.
In that brief, he wrote, “My name is Jimmy Carter.” “In my lifetime, I have been a farmer, a naval officer, a Sunday school teacher, an outdoorsman, a democracy activist, a builder, governor of Georgia, and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. And from 1977 to 1981, I had the privilege of serving as the 39th president of the United States.”
Mr. Carter was a political sensation in his day. He was a new generation of Democrats who, after just one term as governor of Georgia, shocked the political world by beating several better-known rivals to win his party’s presidential nomination in 1976 and then ousting the Republican president, Gerald R. Ford, in the fall.
During his four years in office, he tried to rebuild trust in the government after the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. He did this by starting reforms meant to change how politics worked.
He worked out the famous Camp David Accords, which made peace between Israel and Egypt and are still the basis of relations in the Middle East.
But a lousy economy and a 444-day hostage crisis in Iran in which 52 American diplomats were held hostage hurt his popularity. In 1980, former California Gov. Ronald Reagan beat him in the race for re-election.
After he left office, he did many good things worldwide, like building homes for the poor, fighting Guinea worm, promoting human rights in places where they were being suppressed, watching elections, and trying to end wars.
His work after he left office was more important than what he did as president. This helped him win the Nobel Peace Prize and change how many Americans saw him.
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