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Gracias a la prevención, podemos evitar una crisis grave en el hospital.

Gracias a la prevención, podemos evitar una crisis grave en el hospital.
Thanks to prevention, we can avoid a severe crisis in the hospital.
From Lesson 431:Causal connectors (debido a, a causa de)·Spanish (Latin America)

Questions & Answers about Gracias a la prevención, podemos evitar una crisis grave en el hospital.

Why do we use gracias a here instead of gracias a que?
We use gracias a because it is followed directly by a noun phrase: la prevención. You only add que when you need to follow the connector with a conjugated verb, for example: gracias a que prevenimos la enfermedad (thanks to the fact that we prevented the disease).
Could I substitute gracias a with por culpa de or debido a?
You could use debido a (due to), which is neutral and works fine here. However, using por culpa de would sound very strange. Por culpa de (because of / through the fault of) is strictly used for assigning blame for a negative outcome, while avoiding a crisis is a positive thing.
Why does Spanish use la prevención when the English translation is just 'prevention' without 'the'?
In Spanish, when you talk about an abstract concept or a noun in a general sense, you must use a definite article (el, la, los, or las). Therefore, 'prevention' as a general concept translates to la prevención.
The word crisis ends in an 's'. Is it plural here?
No, it is singular here, which we can tell from the singular article una. Nouns ending in -is (like la crisis, el análisis, or el oasis) do not change their spelling in the plural. To make it plural, you only change the article and adjectives: unas crisis graves.
What is the difference between prevenir and evitar?
They are related but distinct. Prevenir means to take advance measures to stop something from happening (to prevent), which gives us the noun la prevención. Evitar means to keep away from or stop oneself from experiencing something (to avoid). In this sentence, taking preventative measures allows us to avoid the bad outcome.

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