Every year on July 1, India pauses to acknowledge its doctors: the men and women who have chosen, quite literally, to hold life and death in their hands.
This observance, National Doctors’ Day, began in 1991, instituted by the Government of India to honour Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy, one of the country’s most respected physicians and a statesman whose influence still shapes public health in profound ways.
Dr Roy’s personal story is steeped in poignant symmetry; he was born on July 1, 1882, and passed on the same date in 1962. A recipient of the Bharat Ratna, he was also West Bengal’s Chief Minister for 14 years, steering critical healthcare and education initiatives. His life’s work went beyond prescriptions: he was instrumental in founding institutions like the Indian Medical Association (IMA) and the Medical Council of India (MCI), laying down the architecture of modern Indian medicine.
Such was his calibre that even Mahatma Gandhi, at moments of human frailty, sought his care.
For over three decades, July 1st has served not just as an anniversary of his remarkable legacy but as a moment for the nation to look up from its own ailments and recognise the healers who carry forward that mission. From bustling city hospitals to quiet rural clinics, doctors continue to be the frontline custodians of health, bearing witness daily to life’s most vulnerable moments.
Yet, as we prepare to mark Doctors’ Day tomorrow, under this year’s theme “Behind the Mask: Who Heals the Healers?”, it’s hard to ignore how fragile the covenant between society and its caregivers has become. In the past year alone, India has seen an alarming escalation in violence against medical professionals.
A Goa Medical College study found that nearly 68 per cent of government doctors reported facing workplace violence, while newer doctors were particularly at risk, with almost half of those with under five years of experience encountering aggression, often during night shifts.
Nationally, more than 200 cases of assaults on doctors have been registered in just the last three years, with virtually no convictions. The chilling murder of a 22-year-old doctor in Kerala last year, and repeated assaults on duty doctors in places like Thiruvananthapuram and Udaipur, have only underscored the peril woven into this calling.
Even so, most doctors continue to show up — day after relentless day — with the same quiet conviction that brought them to medicine in the first place.
They are there at two in the morning when a stranger’s breath falters. They are there when a frightened child needs stitching up, or when a family waits for the nod that says surgery was successful. They were there through COVID-19, through Ebola scares, through outbreaks of Nipah, and they will be there when the next unknown virus arrives.
The question posed by this year’s theme isn’t rhetorical. Who heals the healers? Who looks after their mental scars, their sleepless vigils, their sometimes unbearable burden of grief?
It is too easy to forget that behind every surgical mask is a human being. Someone who hopes, fears, and perseveres so the rest of us may heal.
As hospitals and civil groups hold ceremonies today to laud doctors, perhaps the deeper tribute is in fostering a climate where doctors are safe, respected, and given space to care not just for patients, but also for themselves.
The answer, then, to the question is plain and simple.
Who heals the healers?
We do.
