The former US president Jimmy Carter was admitted to a hospital on Monday evening for surgery to relieve pressure on his brain caused by bleeding due to recent falls, his spokeswoman said.

In a statement on Tuesday morning, the Carter Center, the Atlanta-based nonprofit he founded after leaving the White House, said Carter was “recovering at Emory University hospital following surgery this morning to relieve pressure on his brain from a subdural hematoma”.

“There are no complications from the surgery,” the statement added, saying the former president would remain in hospital “as long as advisable for observation”.

Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, expressed thanks for all well wishes and support.

Carter, 95, has fallen at least three times this year, and the first incident in the spring required hip replacement surgery.

Following a fall on 6 October which resulted in 14 stitches, he traveled to Nashville, Tennessee, and helped build a Habitat for Humanity home. Carter was briefly hospitalized after fracturing his pelvis on 21 October.

He received a dire cancer diagnosis in 2015 but survived and has since said he is cancer-free.

Nearly four decades after he left office, the oldest-ever former US president still teaches Sunday school around twice a month at Maranatha Baptist church in his tiny hometown of Plains, in south-west Georgia.

The Rev Tony Lowden, Carter’s pastor, said the ex-president was hospitalized on Monday on what he called “a rough day”.

“We just need the whole country to be in prayer for him,” Lowden said.