Leading American actress, Ashley Judd, is in intensive care in a Johannesburg hospital after shattering her leg in an accident in a Congolese rain forest.
The actress was studying an endangered species of ape when the “catastrophic accident” occurred. She said she slipped on a fallen tree “and nearly lost my leg”.
Speaking from her hospital bed, she said the leg was reset in the forest and she was carried in a hammock. For the next 55 hours, she was evacuated from the forest by motorcycle and then flown to Kinshasa where she boarded an aircraft which flew her to Johannesburg.
She said she is grateful to be in “beautiful South Africa” because the Democratic Republic of Congo is not “equipped to deal with massive catastrophic injuries like I have had”.
Judd received critical acclaim for her roles in Smoke, Michael Mann’s Heat and A Time to Kill.
In 2015, Judd said she had been sexually harassed by Harvey Weinstein during the filming of Kiss the Girls.
In 2016, Judd was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations and she has also travelled with YouthAIDS to places affected by illness and poverty such as Cambodia, Kenya, and Rwanda.
