MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Jimmy Carter to undergo brain surgery at age 95

After leaving office in 1981, Carter remained a key player in international events.

Former US president Jimmy Carter was admitted into the Emory University Hospital in Atlanta Monday evening to undergo a procedure to relieve brain pressure caused by bleeding due to recent falls, The Carter Center announced.

Carter, aged 95, is a former peanut farmer and Georgia governor, who defeated Republican Gerald Ford in 1976 to become the nation’s 39th president, serving a single four-year term in the White House. He has lived longer after leaving the White House than any former president in US history.

The former president is to be operated on by Tuesday morning, Georgia time after having suffered a minor pelvic fracture in a fall at his home in Plains, Georgia for which he was hospitalised esrlier this year. He was released from the hospital a few days after that accident.

Another fall in October required stitches to Carter’s face, but he resumed work soon after on a home-building project for the nonprofit group Habitat for Humanity.

In May, the former Democratic president broke his hip, also at home, requiring him to undergo surgery. He was hospitalized briefly in 2017 for dehydration, and was diagnosed with skin cancer in 2015.

The Carter Center said Monday the former president was “resting comfortably,” and that his wife, Rosalynn, 92, was with him.

Carter's presidency was overshadowed by an economic recession, an energy crisis and the taking of US hostages by Iran, but he also played a leading role in brokering the Camp David Accords leading to an Egypt-Israel peace treaty.

He lost his 1980 re-election bid to Republican Ronald Reagan.

After leaving office in 1981, Carter went on to become an international fixture and a noted humanitarian. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his efforts toward finding peaceful solutions to international conflicts, advancing democracy and human rights and promoting economic and social development.

He and his wife founded the Carter Center in 1982 to carry on their international and humanitarian work.