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.
