Washington: Jimmy Carter, America’s oldest living president, will begin hospice care and will spend his remaining days at home after a series of hospital stays.
In a statement released on Saturday (US time), the Carter foundation said that the 98-year-old “today decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention”.
Former US president Jimmy Carter.Credit:AP
“He has the full support of his family and medical team. The Carter family asks for privacy during this time and is grateful for the concern shown by his many admirers.”
Jimmy Carter was America’s 39th president, serving one term in the White House, from 1977 to 1981.
The Democrat has faced a series of health scares in recent years, from beating cancer in 2015 to undergoing surgery to remove pressure on his brain. However, despite keeping a low profile, particularly during the global pandemic, he has continued to speak out about the threat to democracy, which has long been a passion.
In a New York Times article ahead of the January 6 anniversary last year, Carter warned that the US “teeters on the brink of a widening abyss” and that “without immediate action, we are at genuine risk of civil conflict and losing our precious democracy”.
Earlier, he had joined three other living former presidents – Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama – in condemning the Donald Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol building in a bid to prevent Joe Biden’s election victory from being certified.
Carter graduated from the former US Naval Academy in 1946 to run his family’s peanut warehouse business in Plains, Georgia, where he still lives with his wife, Rosalynn Carter. The pair have shared a lifelong romance, and to this day, when asked to recount the best decision he’s ever made, Carter often replies: “Asking Rosalynn to marry me.”
Prior to being president, he was a state senator and governor in Georgia, and until his health problems worsened recently, had spent decades teaching Sunday school at the Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown.
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