Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], May 28 : Rohini Kulkarni's children had
the dinner reservation made a week in advance. Her daughter had ordered
flowers. Her son had picked out a card. Everything was in place for a Mother's
Day that looked, from the outside, exactly as it should.
What no one had planned what no one had thought to ask was
when Rohini had last seen a doctor for herself.
Every Mother’s Day, families across India express love in countless
ways: flowers, messages, dinners, gifts. But rarely does the conversation turn
toward her health. Rarely do we ask when she last had a blood test, a thyroid
screening, a cardiac check-up, or even a routine preventive consultation. Not
because families do not care, but because women’s health has long been treated
as something to be managed later, after everyone else’s needs are met. And the
consequences of that silence are not small. According to the National Family
Health Survey (NFHS-5), more than 57% of
Indian women between the ages of 15 and 49 are anaemic. Studies suggest that
fewer than one in five Indian women undergo routine preventive health
screenings in any given year. Heart disease, often assumed to be a man’s
condition, is in fact the leading cause of death among women in India,
responsible for nearly one in three female deaths nationally. These are not
statistics about strangers. They are statistics about mothers. About women like
Rohini, who are celebrated once a year and screened almost never.
This year, Surya Hospitals decided to change that conversation.
The hospital's Mother's Day initiative ‘Echoes of Her Love’ is built
around a deliberately simple and uncomfortable question: beyond the
celebration, are mothers truly being cared for in the way they deserve? Not
symbolically. Not once a year over brunch. But in a way that actually protects
their health over time. For a hospital that has spent four decades doing
exactly that, Surya Hospitals was founded in 1983 with an unwavering focus on
women's and children's health, at a time when Mumbai's suburbs had little
access to specialised maternal care the question is not a campaign idea.
It is an institutional belief.
“One of the strongest realities we have observed is women often learn
to normalise discomfort instead of seeking timely medical care, ” says Dr. Bhupendra Avasthi, Chairman and
Managing Director, Surya Hospitals. “At Surya Hospitals, caring for women has
never meant treating illness only after it appears. It has always meant
encouraging earlier intervention, preventive care, and creating a culture where
women feel equally deserving of medical attention, not last in line for it.
‘Echoes of Her Love’ is simply an extension of that belief.”
The initiative leads with awareness specifically, the medical
reality that women in India consistently delay preventive health screenings
while managing the health of everyone around them. Cardiac concerns, thyroid
disorders, anaemia and vision changes are among the conditions that specialists
at Surya Hospitals say are regularly caught late in women, precisely because
there was never a moment that felt like the right time to check. According
to studies published in the Indian Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism,
hypothyroidism affects nearly 1 in 10 adults in India, with a higher prevalence
among women. India also carries one of the highest rates of
osteoporosis in Asia, with an estimated 50 million affected, the majority of
them women, most of them unaware.
"The most common thing we hear from mothers who come to us with a
delayed diagnosis is that they knew something felt different; they just kept
putting it off," says, Senior Consultant, Obstetrics and Gynaecology,
Surya Hospitals. "Mother's Day feels like the right moment to interrupt
that pattern. One conversation, one appointment, one decision to finally put
herself first that is all it takes to change the trajectory."
The response from families who engaged with the initiative told its own
story. A father who came in asking about his wife's persistent fatigue,
something the family had long dismissed as the exhaustion of raising three
children, left with an appointment for a full blood panel and thyroid
screening. A daughter who booked a Mother’s Day health check-up for her mother
as a gift found herself discussing preventive care, routine screenings, and
long-overdue consultations she had never previously considered important.
In many homes, the conversation quietly shifted from “What
should we give her this Mother’s Day?” to “When was her
last health check-up?” That shift, subtle, human, and deeply
meaningful was exactly the point.
It is a shift that Surya Hospitals has been working toward for forty
years. The hospital's NABH-accredited centres across Mumbai, Pune, and Jaipur
have collectively supported women through high-risk pregnancies, complex
diagnoses, and recoveries that required not just medical expertise but genuine
human care. Its NICU teams have seen babies born as early as 22 weeks go home
healthy. Surya Hospitals has been recognised among India’s leading hospitals
for paediatrics, neonatology, and women’s healthcare, including being awarded
“Best Hospital in India for Pediatric and Neonatal Care” at the CIMS Healthcare
Excellence Awards and ranking among Mumbai’s top speciality hospitals for
paediatrics and gynaecology in the Mid-Day Critical Care Hospital Survey.
This Mother's Day initiative is consistent with that approach: no grand
gestures, no sweeping promises. Just a question worth asking, and the medical
expertise to act on the answer.
For healthcare professionals, the significance of what Surya Hospitals
is doing extends well beyond a single day on the calendar. Preventive care for
women remains one of the most consistently underprioritised areas of health in
India shaped by a combination of time constraints, financial hesitation,
cultural expectations, and a deeply ingrained tendency for mothers to absorb
their own discomfort quietly and carry on. An initiative that uses the
visibility of Mother's Day to spotlight that gap is doing something more
durable than any seasonal promotion. It is normalising the idea that a mother's
health is not an afterthought. It is not something to attend to once everything
else is in order. It is the foundation on which everything else in a family
rests.
Because sometimes the most meaningful way to celebrate a mother is not
just to honour everything she has done for everyone else but to finally
make sure someone is looking after her too. Echoing her love back with an
actionable ‘Thank You’.
About Surya Hospitals
Surya Hospitals has been a pioneer in offering modern healthcare
services for women and children in India since 1983. Recognised among India’s
leading multispecialty hospitals for maternal and child health, the hospital
has received several national recognitions, including the “Best Hospital in
India for Pediatric and Neonatal Care” at the CIMS Healthcare Excellence Awards
and top rankings in Paediatrics as well as Gynaecology & Obstetrics in the
Mid-Day Critical Care Hospital Survey.
With NABH-accredited centres in Mumbai (Santacruz and Chembur), Pune,
and Jaipur, Surya Hospitals continues to focus on specialised, preventive, and
patient-centric healthcare for women, children, and families.
For more information, visit suryahospitals.com.