Amitabh Bachchan surviving on just 25% of his liver

Bollywood’s most loved and respected actor, Amitabh Bachchan has made a shocking revelation. I am now surviving on a 25% liver, under constant medication and being labelled as a Chronic Cirrhosis of the Liver condition – a condition normally described for alcoholics.

While lauding the role of the film icon Amitabh Bachchan in giving a push to hepatitis-B awareness programme, he said that for health issues, support of the society is quite important and Amitabh Bachchan’s contribution had added power to the campaign. 35 years after his miraculous recovery after nearly dying, Big B has revealed that he contracted Hepatitis B from a blood transfusion he received while in hospital and now lives with a quarter-functioning liver. 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.

“One of my blood donors was carrying the Hepatitis B virus which went into my system”.

It was during a normal routine check-up that he got to know that he was surviving on only 25% of his liver. That is the bad part. The good part is you can survive even with 12%. The joint efforts of Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and UNICEF India attempt to rid the nation of seven life-threatening diseases (diphtheria, whooping cough, tetanus, polio, TB, measles and Hepatitis-B). Despite having the means to go overseas, all his treatments during all ailments have been done here itself. “When we took a second opinion overseas, I found out that whatever diagnosis was commanded to me by Indian [doctors] was no different from the foreign ones”, he said.

“There has to be a continuity in the work of the campaign and the field workers towards awareness”, said Bachchan, who was once afflicted with HBV.