India, July 2 -- National Doctors' Day should be more than a single day of gratitude. It is a reminder that India's doctors are consistently the first to step forward in a crisis, often at real personal cost - and that gratitude alone will not protect the next generation of patients.

Every 1 July, India observes National Doctors' Day, a tribute first instituted in memory of Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy - physician, statesman, and one of independent India's most respected public figures. But the profession being honoured today looks very different from the one Dr Roy practised. Doctors are no longer confined to clinics and operating theatres; increasingly, they are the first people called upon when a cyclone flattens a coastline, a heatwave fill...