Agencies/Mumbai

Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan has made the stunning revelation that he has been fighting the deadly Hepatitis B virus for more than three decades and surviving despite suffering extensive liver damage.
The 73-year-old megastar, who is still highly active in the industry with a number of films scheduled to release over the next two years, made his illness public at a media function to raise awareness of the disease in Mumbai on Monday.
Bachchan, who rose to fame in the 70s and 80s with several blockbuster movies featuring him as an “angry young man,” was infected by the virus following blood transfusions after suffering life-threatening injuries while shooting a fight scene for the 1983 hit movie Coolie.
“Hepatitis B came to me accidentally. After my accident on the sets of Coolie, I was infused with the blood of about 200 donors and 60 bottles of blood were injected into my system. The Australian antigen Hepatitis B had only been detected three months ago and it was very new for being detected also among various tests needed to be carried out before giving blood to another patient,” Bachchan said.
“One of my blood donors was carrying Hepatitis B virus which went into my system. I continued to function normally till the year 2000 and almost 18 years after the accident, during a very normal medical checkup, I was told that my liver was infected, and I had lost 75% of my liver. So, if I am standing here today, you are looking at a person who is surviving with 25 percent of his liver. That is the bad part. The good part is you can survive even with 12%. But no one wants to get to that stage.”
Bachchan added that the stigma attached to people suffering from Hepatitis or TB discourages them from seeking treatment.
“Don’t stigmatise a person with such diseases but encourage them to take proper treatment. I would request people not to be afraid to get tested. It is better to get detected than carry any unknown virus inside,” he said.
Taking a cue from the success of the pulse polio campaign, the government roped in Bachchan as the brand ambassador for its campaign against Hepatitis B in March this year.
According to latest World Health Organisation (WHO) data, Hepatitis B causes 1.4mn deaths every year globally, compared to 1.5mn deaths from HIV/Aids and 1.2mn each from malaria and tubercluosis.
India has over 40mn Hepatitis B infected patients (second only to China) and constitutes about 15% of the entire pool of Hepatitis B in the world. Every year, nearly 600,000 patients die from the infection on the Indian subcontinent.