Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter under hospice care at home

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter has entered hospice care in Plains, Ga., a statement from the Carter Center confirmed Saturday. At 98 years old, he is the longest-living former American president.

After a series of short hospital stays, the statement said, Carter "decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention."

The statement said the 39th president has the full support of his medical team and family, which "asks for privacy at this time and is grateful for the concern shown by his many admirers."

Carter was a little-known Georgia governor when he began his bid for the presidency ahead of the 1976 election. His surprise performance in the Iowa caucuses established the small, Midwestern state as an epicentre of presidential politics.

He went on to defeat then-president Gerald Ford in 1976, capitalizing as a Washington outsider in the wake of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal that drove Richard Nixon from office in 1974.

Carter, a Democrat, served a single, tumultuous term and was defeated by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980 — a landslide loss that ultimately paved the way for his decades of global advocacy via the Carter Center.

The former president and his wife, Rosalynn, 95, opened the centre in 1982. His work there garnered a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Jason Carter, the couple's grandson who now chairs the Carter Center's governing board, said Saturday in a tweet that he "saw both of my grandparents yesterday. They are at peace and — as always — their home is full of love."

In August 2015, Carter had a small cancerous mass removed from his liver. The following year, he announced that he needed no further treatment, as an experimental drug had eliminated any sign of cancer.

Carter celebrated his most recent birthday in October with family and friends in Plains, the tiny Georgia town where he and Rosalynn were born in the years between the First World War and the Great Depression.

The Carter Center last year marked 40 years of promoting democracy and conflict resolution, monitoring elections and advancing public health in the developing world.