Elife Avan - 5

"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.

To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?

In today’s world, while some people think that a large part of the health budget should be spent on health education, others advocate that a huge part of the health cost should be allocated to treatment. From my point of view, because the effectiveness of health education on people is low, I disagree with this statement.

First of all, three years ago, if someone asked me 'is prevention better than cure?' probably I would say ‘yes’. However, I changed my perception because of the pandemic period. When we faced with a pandemic period for the first time, we did not know what kind of illness it was. All scientists and world health organizations began to find remedies to pull through the illness. Unfortunately, recovery was not found but all humanity needed this treatment. When we think about these, we notice that a lot of human beings suffered from this epidemic and some of them are still fighting against it despite the fact that all the trainings were offered to inform people. As a result of these, very few people made a provision against the illness in spite of all risks.

Additionally, I do not believe that people are affected by any sort of health education. For instance, as everyone knows, smoking is very dangerous for the human body and there is a lot of training on this issue. Many different advertisements have tried in different ways like placing revolting and disincentive pictures on packages of the cigarettes to warn humans about smoking hazards. However, it was not a nice idea and people who smoke never gave up this habit. Today, a large number of population still continue this bad behaviour. Thus, we can clearly understand that if a person does not want to be educated, nobody can educate them. That is why a large part of the health budget can be used for cures.

All in all, we are living in a developed century and people have to be aware of what is good or not for them. That is why, I strongly support the idea that spending a large portion of countries' budgets on curing illness rather than on informing and educating people can be a much better choice.