Former President Jimmy Carter, who at 98 is the longest-living President in American history, has decided to forgo further medical treatment and will enter hospice care at his home in Georgia, the Carter Centre announced on Saturday.

“After a series of short hospital stays, former US President Jimmy Carter decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention,” the centre said in a statement posted on Twitter. “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 centre did not elaborate on what conditions had prompted the recent hospital visits or his decision to enter hospice care. Carter has survived a series of health crises in recent years, including a bout with the skin cancer melanoma, which spread to his liver and brain, as well as repeated falls.

Jason Carter, one of Carter’s grandchildren and the chairman of the Carter Centre’s board of trustees, said he had seen the former President and First Lady on Friday.

“They are at peace and — as always — their home is full of love,” he wrote on Twitter.

Hospice is defined as care for terminally ill patients when the priority is not to provide further treatment but to reduce pain and discomfort towards the end of life. The former President lives with his wife, Rosalynn Carter, 95, in a modest ranch house that the couple built in Plains, Georgia, in 1961.

Carter has defied illness and death for years, outlasting two Presidents who followed him as well as his own Vice-President. He became the longest-living President in March 2019 when he passed former President George H.W. Bush, who died the previous November.

After Carter’s melanoma spread to his brain in 2015, he drew praise for announcing it publicly. Even as he underwent treatment, he continued to teach Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, as promised. Within months, he announced that he was cancer-free.

In 2019, Carter fell at least three times, at one point breaking a hip and at another requiring 14 stitches. Each time he bounced back, even showing up for a Habitat for Humanity home-building project shortly after one fall. But he has slowly retreated from public life lately, making fewer and fewer appearances or statements.