IELTS Writing Task 2 Practice Essay Question: “Prevention is better than cure”. Researching and treating diseases is too costly so it would be better to invest in preventative measures. To what extent do you agree. It is widely believed that prevention from illness is more efficient than treatment. Some argue that government should save money from investing in treatment which is too expensive, and invest in prevention instead. In my opinion, I partly agree with it, because of the fact that researching on treatment is still efficient to tackle some diseases which has no treatment yet. Investing in prevention improves the people’s health in the long term. From education to general public, to clinical measures, would reduce the risk of disease outbreak. For example, in 2003 Hong Kong experienced SARS, which has gradually been weakened in the city since citizens later had learned to put on mask to prevent due to active general health education proposed by government and hospitals. In addition, nowadays many vaccines are available as a way of creating immunity to certain diseases, thus people are much healthier, and have longer lives. However, there are still diseases which are unclear of the cause. Take AIDs as an example. It becomes known that some measures can be taken to reduce the risk of having AIDs such as to use condom while having sex. However, some AIDs patients may be inherited the illness from their parents, in which treatment becomes important . In addition, research on treatment is always beneficial as it can help people better understand the pathology of the disease and develop accurate cure in the future. A certain amount of expense is still required to examine and develop treatment. In conclusion, it is efficient that we take prevention measures to keep healthy, but we cannot deny the usefulness of medical research which is consistently improving health science as well as our health.