ATLANTA
Former President Jimmy Carter has entered hospice care, the Carter Center said Saturday.
A charity set up by the 98-year-old former president said on Twitter that after a series of short hospital stays, Carter “has chosen to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care in lieu of further medical intervention.”
It said he has the full support of his medical team and family, who “ask for privacy at this time and are grateful for the concern shown by his many supporters.”
Carter, a Democrat, became the 39th President of the United States, defeating former President Gerald R. Ford in 1976. He served one term and was defeated by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.
In August 2015, Carter had a small cancerous tumor removed from his liver. The following year, Carter announced that he did not need further treatment because the experimental drug had eliminated any signs of cancer.
Carter celebrated his last birthday in October with family and friends in Plains, the tiny Georgia town where he and his wife, Rosalyn, were born in the years between World War I and the Great Depression.
The Carter Center, which the 39th president and former first lady created after his one term in the White House, last year celebrated 40 years of promoting democracy and conflict resolution, monitoring elections and improving health care in developing countries.
James Earl Carter Jr. won the 1976 presidential election after starting the campaign as a little-known one-term governor of Georgia. His surprise performance at the Iowa caucuses made the small Midwestern state the epicenter of presidential politics. Carter went on to beat Ford in the general election, largely because he swept the South before his home region swung heavily to the Republican side.
