Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan has signed on as the face of a new national hepatitis B virus (HBV) awareness campaign in India, where the liver disease affects more than 40 million people, or 15 percent of the world’s entire HBV cases, The Times of India reports.

The Indian government partnered with the famous actor and the international aid agency UNICEF for the new initiative. Named “Mission Indradhanush,” the campaign launches an ambitious immunization program that aims to achieve full hep B vaccine coverage among Indian children by 2020.

Bachchan is no stranger to being an ambassador for public health initiatives. The star was the face of a highly successful polio eradication campaign in India in 2005.

HBV vaccine coverage among children in India is at 65 percent. Health ministry data shows inadequately sterilized needles to be the main cause of outbreaks of the virus across the region.

India’s hep B rate is the second highest in the world, just behind China. Nearly 600,000 people die from the liver disease on the subcontinent every year. According to experts, social issues such as gender discrimination, religious and caste separations, as well as low community literacy levels, are contributing to low rates of vaccination.