Hillary Clinton has praised the NHS after receiving treatment for an injury while visiting the UK.

The former US presidential candidate fell down a flight of stairs and broke her toe the morning she was due to appear on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, ITV’s This Morning and BBC One’s The Graham Norton Show.

When she arrived belatedly on Norton’s set, Clinton explained what had happened – and paid tribute to the NHS.

“I was running down the stairs in heels with a cup of coffee in hand, I was talking over my shoulder and my heel caught and I fell backwards,” she told Norton, according to The Guardian. “I tried to get up and it really hurt. I’ve broken my toe.”

Read more: American doctor reveals truth about our NHS after spending time in A&E

“I’ve received excellent care from your excellent health service,” Clinton added.

Clinton has long advocated for change to the notoriously complicated and expensive US healthcare system, campaigning for a publicly-funded option. In the early Nineties she also worked closely with her husband, President Bill Clinton, on an unsuccessful reform package that aimed to provide universal healthcare for all Americans.

Her praise of the NHS stands in stark opposition to her former rival, President Donald Trump. Trump credited the NHS as working “incredibly well in Scotland” in 2015, when he was campaigning to be the Republican candidate for the US presidency.

However, in the last few months the Trump administration has attempted repeatedly to introduce legislation that would ‘kill’ the Obama-era Affordable Care Act.

Clinton is currently visiting the UK to promote her new book, What Happened. During a talk at the Southbank Centre in London, she said she believed that “endemic misogyny” had contributed to her election defeat in November 2016.

She added that she wanted to be remembered as a “leader of a revolution” in women’s rights.

Read more: Brexit should have warned us about Trump, says Hillary Clinton

“I was part of a revolution for women’s rights that began in the Sixties with real intensity – continued up until the present day – and I became a leader of that revolution,” she said, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

“It is the unfinished business globally of the 21st century to free women from the constraints and strictures that hold them back, that squash their dreams and to give every woman everywhere the chance to live up to her own God-given potential and that's what I believe in.”

In a separate interview with the BBC’s Andrew Marr, Clinton said that she was “shocked and appalled” at the revelations about Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. Weinstein has been accused of dozens of counts of sexual misconduct, from sexual harassment to rape.

He has also been a prolific donor to many Democratic political campaigns and progressive organisations over the years – including giving a total of $35,400 to Clinton’s two presidential runs, and donating between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Foundation, the humanitarian charity founded by Bill Clinton.

Clinton told Marr that Weinstein’s alleged behaviour was “disgusting, and the stories that have come out are heartbreaking. I really commend the women who have been willing to step forward now and tell their stories.”

However, she urged people not just to see Weinstein as an isolated case. “It’s important that we not just focus on him and whatever consequences flow from these stories about his behaviour, but that we recognise this kind of behaviour cannot be tolerated anywhere, whether it’s in entertainment [or] politics.

“After all, we have someone admitting to [being a] sexual assaulter in the Oval Office.”

Stylist recently met Clinton at her home in upstate New York to talk defeat, resilience and what’s next. You can read the full interview here.

Images:  Rex Features