Jimmy Carter, former US president, reveals he has cancer

Last Updated on Wednesday, 12 August 2015, 21:48 by GxMedia

(BBC).-Former US President Jimmy Carter says recent liver surgery revealed that he has cancer and it has spread to other parts of his body.

The 90-year-old statesman underwent surgery to remove a small mass in his liver earlier this month.

He said he would reveal more “when facts are known, possibly next week”.

Back in May of this year, Mr. Carter arrived in Guyana and left the following day without observing the general and regional elections. The Carter Center then had cited an undisclosed illness. He is widely credited with influencing electoral reforms including the formula for the make-up of the seven-member Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) that managed the 1992 general and regional elections- the first internationally certified free and fair poll in almost 30 years.

Mr Carter, who left the White House in 1981, has remained active carrying out humanitarian efforts with his Carter Center in recent years.

He founded the centre, which focuses on human rights efforts and political mediation, soon after he left office.

He was later responsible for negotiating a 1994 nuclear disarmament pact with North Korea and has visited Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in recent years.

A Democrat from Georgia, Mr Carter was elected president in 1976.

In May, he returned early from a trip to observe elections in Ghana due to a cold.

The BBC interviewed Mr Carter in February about his efforts to eradicate guinea worm disease and in the South Sudan and Mali and river blindness in both Africa and Latin America.

He said then he was happy to still be travelling and doing work across the globe