Jimmy Carter out of hospital after dehydration scare in Canada

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WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) – Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was discharged on Friday from a hospital in Canada where he received treatment after becoming dehydrated while working at a charity house-building project, the Carter Center said.

Carter, 92, became unsteady while working on Thursday on the steps of a home at a building project for Habitat for Humanity, a charitable organization that promotes affordable home ownership, eyewitnesses said.

He had experienced dehydration and was taken to St. Boniface General Hospital for treatment as a precaution, according to a statement from the Carter Center, which is based in Atlanta.

By Friday morning, Carter was smiling as he returned to the Habitat for Humanity building site in Winnipeg to attend an event to kick off the last day of the project, photos posted by the group on social media showed.

A Democrat who served in the White House from January 1977 to January 1981, Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his humanitarian work.

Carter’s visit to the hospital generated an outpouring of support for the former president, who has lived longer after his term in office than any other president in U.S. history.

Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, shared on Friday “their appreciation for the many well-wishes he received worldwide,” the Carter Center said.

Carter, whose family has a history of cancer, disclosed in August 2015 that he had been diagnosed with a form of skin cancer known as melanoma, that had spread to his brain and elsewhere and had been spotted during liver surgery.

By December of that year, Carter told the Maranatha Baptist Church, where he teaches Sunday school in his home town of Plains, Georgia, that his latest brain scan showed no sign of the disease.

Carter brokered the 1978 Camp David Accords that ushered in peace between Israel and Egypt. Through his work on global issues, he is regarded as a better former president than he was a president, having left office profoundly unpopular.

(Reporting by Rod Nickel; Writing by Letitia Stein; Editing by Bernadette Baum)