Prevention is better than cure: Out of a country’s health budget, a large proportion should be diverted from treatment to spending on health education and preventative measures.
T
he rising costs of health care have become an issue for many countries in the world. To deal with this problem, it is recommended that a big part of the state health budget be used for health education and disease prevention instead of treatment.
First of all, many kinds of diseases are preventable and preventing a disease is usually much cheaper than treating it. For example, people could prevent catching a cold if they dress warmly and get good rest when the weather first gets cold in the winter. But many people get sick because they fail to do so and have to spend much more money seeing a doctor. Another case in point is cancer, the leading cause of death in the world. But lung cancer, liver cancer and many other kinds of cancer could all be effectively prevented if people take measures for their health in an early stage. Small things such as smoking less or eating more healthy food would have kept millions of families from becoming bankrupt if the patients took measures for early cancer prevention.
In addition, health education also plays a key role in improving people’s health. By giving people more information about health, countries could help people understand the importance of disease prevention and ways to achieve it.
However, emphasizing on disease prevention is not downplaying the significance of medical treatment. After all, prevention and treatment are just two different means toward the same end.
In conclusion, we could save money in health care and treat patients more successfully if our country uses more money on health prevention and education.
