The World Health Organization (WHO), on Friday, appointed Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan as its Goodwill Ambassador for Hepatitis in South-East Asia Region to boost awareness and intensify action to arrest the hepatitis epidemic.
The actor, who announced in 2015 that he was Hepatitis B patient, said he was surviving with only 25 per cent of his liver functions.
The actor is said to have been infected with the Hepatitis B virus during a surgery in 1982 following an accident on the sets of the movie Coolie .
‘Absolutely committed’
“I am absolutely committed to the cause of hepatitis. As a person living with hepatitis B, I know the pain and sufferings that it causes. No one should ever suffer from viral hepatitis,” Mr Bachchan said at an event organised by World Health Organisation.
Though preventable, viral hepatitis kills 4,10 000 people in the south-east Asia every year, most of them in their productive years. Nearly 90 million people suffer from chronic liver disease that is driving rates of liver cancer and cirrhosis in the region, according to the latest WHO estimates released this year.
By conservative estimates, four to six crore people in India are carriers of the Hepatitis B virus and WHO estimates that two to five per cent of India’s population may be affected by the virus.
“Mr. Bachchan’s voice is one that is heard by people across the country, regardless of cultural, social or economic background and can make real change possible. We have witnessed this in polio eradication,” Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda said.
