In countries where resources are scarce and public demand is very high doctors and other medical professionals are constantly faced with a huge ethical dilemma: should one put one's limited resources into keeping people healthy by preventative measures, or should one put these resources into the treatment of patients the cure?
In practice, most health systems do a bit of both. But in developed countries, such as the US, the amount spent on medicine is overwhelmingly on treatment, rather than prevention. For every two cents spent on prevention, 98 cents are spent on treatment, often on conditions that would not have occurred if preventive measures had been taken.
In the early years of independence from colonialism, most public expenditure on health focussed on expensive hospitals, with sophisticated equipment, designed to cure disease.
These hospitals were situated in cities, and those who benefited from them were mainly city-dwellers, particularly the middle classes. Consequently, people in rural areas suffered.
Yet many of those lined up in expensive hospitals requiring urgent medical attention would not be there if a few basic measures were taken on prevention. This situation continues, to a great extent, to this day, and we are still living with the results of these
policies. For example, there is extensive research to know that babies that are breast fed are much more are likely to grow into healthy adulthood than babies that are not. This conflict can be resolved only by comincing rural community health worker's (CHWs) and the communities in which they work of the Benefits of exclusive breast feeding.
So there are many of such preventive measure that can prevent the use of large amount of money on treatment, fro example, exercise can prevent many deadly exercise such as obesity, heart disases and many more yet the government is not opening training and orienting people on the benefits of such preventive measure.
