Prevention is better than cure Research and Treating diseases is too costly so it would be better to invest in a preventive measure To what extent do you agree

With the increasing cost of healthcare and medical supplies, it is often argued that investments in better preventive measures are to be done rather than funneling the budget to the research. In my opinion, government funds are to be invested for protection against the disease, yet research and treatment should not be discouraged in the process. The impending write-ups zeros in my opinion in this issue.

Seeking treatment for a disease requires multiple tests, resources and facilities which can easily be avoided if the speed of the disease is controlled in the earliest stages. Healthier choices and proper tending at the preliminary stage can eliminate the spread of most of the diseases—generally viral or bacterial in nature. Moreover, the expenses involved for administering preventive medications has cut the costs to nearly half of what it would have been spent while treating the similar diseases. Studies has shown that only the 20% capital investment spent in the research and treatment of a HIV, would be enough to distribute the HIV-prep preventive drug globally

Meanwhile, adopting preventive measures alone can not ensure that the disease could be completely eliminated, hence the requirement of a cure to the disease is needed eventually. Additionally, some diseases do not have any strong preventive measures, communicating to the people inevitably, thus requiring an investment in high tech research to tackle them. Funneling the investments to the preventive cure rather than biomedical research thus limits the resources to combat such illnesses. Furthermore, with the emergence of newer diseases everyday, the cause of which are lesser known to the scientists, finding a cure cannot be replaced by searching for the causes behind contamination.

Taking all the aspects in consideration, I believe that the choice of preventive measure over research for cure is rather circumstantial, while some diseases for which the finding a cure has been an issues could use a shift of paradigm for the focus in preventive approach, newer diseases will suffer from cutting costs in the research and treatment.