Prevention is more important than cure. researching and treating disease is very costly, so it is better to invest in preventative measures. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Recently, some people have pointed out that prevention is the most important phase and

thus

it is worth the greatest investment compared to the others

such

as medication development and

treatment

, which are expensive. I mostly agree with

this

opinion

although

I believe there should be a fair amount of funding in cure as well.

Firstly

, researching should take less priority as that in the medical field is not only expensive but

also

time-consuming.

According to

a recent research paper, the average duration required to develop a medication or a

treatment

measure for a disease is more than a decade.

Therefore

, even if the budget is utilised successfully and leads to some insightful results, patients can only benefit after a long time period, which is enough for the disease to worsen.

In contrast

, funding for prevention possibly spreads its importance quickly to citizens and promotes immediate improvement in their lifestyle, meaning prevention is more effective.

On the other hand

, there is no perfect strategy to prevent disease, so leading research on the

treatment

of diseases is very crucial and

thus

the investment in those sectors should continue in my opinion.

For instance

, stomach cancer was one of the diseases that people were most scared of half a century ago. Nowadays, the number of patients has been dropping for 30 years

due to

the advancement in research and preventative measures.

However

, there are still more than 10,000 patients in Japan per year, and

therefore

it is important to have an effective

treatment

for them so they can not only finish the

treatment

earlier but

also

be released from pain and put less effort into it. If no money is spent on

this

sector, more people are expected to suffer from painful

treatment

including medication with severe side effects, and the number of deaths will rise in the worst-case scenario

due to

less efficient methods.

To conclude

, it is better to invest more in preventive medicine because it takes less expense and duration. Despite

this

point of view,

treatment

of diseases is still a key part in order to mitigate the burden of the cure and to minimise the time taken. I strongly believe that a good balance between those two is the best solution.