In just about all aspects of life we have problems that need to be solved. Whether in our personal life or in business few things run smoothly. The answer? Solve the problems, dummy!

I am sorry to complicate matters, but there are very often two categories that problem-solving falls into. One category can be described as "curing" or "dealing with the symptoms" or "quick fix". I'll call it "fire-fighting" for the purposes of brevity. The other category is prevention. Some problems. especially major ones, require both: an immediate fix followed by preventative measures. In fact, in an ideal world, all problems would have this treatment. Of course, the fact that there are problems in the first place tells us that this is not an ideal world. The barrier to utopia is limited resources.

Take health for example: in an ideal world doctors would practice combine fire-fighting cures with preventative medicine. We would all have regular check-ups, have personalised diets and even lifestyles prescribed to us - perhaps have a personal physician assigned to each and every one of us, watching over us day and night. As this is clearly impossible, healthcare specialists, like all of us, must prioritise.

Having established that resources are finite, what balance must doctors strike between fire-fighting and prevention? This, of course, is an age-old dilemma that all societies face. If one looks at this problem superficially, the conclusion that might be reached is: "If we prevent problems then there is little need for fire-fighting". This is true to some extent but surely depends on the situation. In fact, it depends on the relationship between the cost of prevention versus the cost of fire-fighting.

Fighting real life fires are a good example that demonstrate the dilemma. We would all like to have a fire station at the end of our roads but we are all sensible enough to know that we couldn't afford it. In the UK, our fire service has the dual role of putting out actual fires and preventing them. Within their limited resources they need to ensure that there is a balance struck between the time and effort devoted to preventative measures such as issuing fire certificates, educating the public about fire risks etc and having enough people and equipment to tackle blazes when they occur. The fire service doesn't make these judgements superficially. They carefully weigh up different risk factors and allocate resources accordingly.

Back to the doctors. We could screen healthy people for all sorts of illnesses. The problem with this approach is that most of the people that will have been screened will have never contracted the illness. In effect, the money, time and effort spent on those people would have been wasted. On the other hand, if a particular illness was relatively common - take breast cancer for example - and, if caught too late, devastating to those that contracted it, it would make sense to have a screening programme.

I would suggest that those that preach preventative medicine have a long hard look at what they are proposing. Would a major preventative screening or educatitive programme have the desired effect, or would it eat up precious resources? For some problems this may be the case - but not for all.

In our business we sell fly killer machines and fly screens. Here is another example of the balance between fire-fighting and prevention. Our fly screens are fitted to windows and doors and stop any flies from entering a building. This is not only very desirable, it is also the law in the UK where open food is being prepared in commercial premises. This is prevention. Virtually all of our fly screen customers also purchase fly killer machines. These do the fire-fighting. Somebody, somewhere will inevitably leave a fly screen open or perhaps remove one for cleaning, letting in a fly. Flies are pretty nasty when it comes to spreading germs and the fly killers are the last defence. We strongly urge our customers, especially those involved in food preparation, to have both fly killers and fly screens installed.

Striking the right balance between prevention and cure is vital - any fire-fighter will tell you that!