Former US president Jimmy Carter enters hospice care

Carter, 98, helped to strike 1978 peace deal between Israel and Egypt

Jimmy Carter has 'decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family'. AP

The Nobel Peace Prize winner and former US president Jimmy Carter has entered home hospice care, his Carter Centre charity said.

The Georgia-based charity said that after a series of short hospital stays, Mr Carter had “decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention”.

The Carter Centre promotes democracy and conflict resolution, monitors elections and advances public health in the developing world.

As president, Mr Carter helped to strike a peace deal between Israel and Egypt. In 1978, they signed the Camp David Accords that led to a peace treaty the following year.

He was also president when Americans were taken hostage at the US embassy in Tehran.

The Carter Centre said he had 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”.

The charity's headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, are not far from the birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 in recognition of his “untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development”.

US senator Raphael Warnock, who is also the pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church where Martin Luther King Jr preached, wished the Carter family comfort.

“Across life's seasons, President Jimmy Carter, a man of great faith, has walked with God,” he tweeted. “In this tender time of transitioning, God is surely walking with him.”

Mr Carter was the 39th US president. He defeated Gerald R Ford in 1976, winning the election after beginning the campaign as a little-known, one-term Georgia governor.

He served a single term before his defeat by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.

In August 2015, Mr 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.

Mr Carter celebrated his 98th birthday in October with family and friends in Plains, the small Georgia town where he and his wife, Rosalynn, were born in the years between the First World War and the Great Depression.

He regularly helps the Habitat for Humanity charity where volunteers build affordable homes.