Ashley Judd recounts nearly-fatal hiking accident, ‘would’ve bled to death in Europe’

Actress Ashley Judd recently reflected on encountering a horrific accident in the forests of Congo last year, after which she was left with a hemorrhaging leg that nearly killed her.

The 53-year-old actress encountered the accident while hiking in a forest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in February 2021, after which a 55-hour rescue operation ensued at the end of which she was medevaced to South Africa.

Talking on the Sex, Body & Soul podcast with Kate Roberts, Judd shared, “I don’t know how the mind and the body and the soul come together to manage to endure the unendurable. I bit a stick, I screamed, I howled, I convulsed. I never did pass out — I wished that I could.”

She laid on the forest floor for five hours before getting help from her ‘Congolese brothers’ who carried her up hills in a hammock.

“I was in hospital in South Africa about nine days. And then I was medevaced to Tennessee. But when I got to South Africa my leg didn’t have a pulse and I was hemorrhaging, and if I had been medevaced to Europe I would’ve bled to death,” said Judd.