Ashley Judd hospitalised after suffering massive catastrophic leg injury

Ashley Judd. Pic/AFP

American actor Ashley Judd was taken to an ICU trauma ward in South Africa after suffering massive catastrophic injuries in an accident in the Congo.

As per E! News, the 52-year-old actor detailed her experience in an Instagram Live with The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof on Friday. The actor revealed that she severely injured her leg during an excursion on the Congo rainforest when she tripped over a fallen tree in the dark.

Judd spoke about the accident from her hospital bed about how she was now in an "ICU trauma unit in beautiful South Africa, which has taken me in from the Congo, a country I deeply love which is not, unfortunately, equipped to deal with massive catastrophic injuries like I have had."

She explained that the experience further illuminated the privilege she held as a person of means visiting the Congo. She explained during the Instagram live, "The difference between a Congolese person and me is disaster insurance that allowed me 55 hours after my accident to get to an operating table in South Africa."

She detailed the "incredibly harrowing" experience, which "started with five hours of lying on the forest floor" until she was able to be evacuated. She spent the ordeal "howling like a wild animal" and biting down on a stick to try to alleviate some of the pain.

Judd then rode for nearly six hours on a motorcycle to get to the nearest place to stay, which, she explained, only happened because she was able to pay for such transportation. She was taken to the capital of Kinshasa before being moved, finally, to the hospital.

Despite the terrifying journey, Judd explained that she was very lucky to be in the position she was in. The Golden Globe nominee shared that many Congolese people don't have the ability to afford "a simple pill to kill the pain when you've shattered a leg in four places and have nerve damage."

As Judd explained on her Instagram on Friday, she was working in the Congo at a research camp studying an endangered species of apes called bonobos. "Bonobos matter. And so do the people in whose ancestral forest they range and the other 25,600,000 Congolese in need of humanitarian assistance," Judd wrote on Instagram.

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