EVERY life is precious. And the impact of the loss of life through crime cannot ever really be quantified.

Yet we must acknowledge that the moral and social failures represented by each and every murder committed in our country also come at a tremendous cost.

The Prime Minister's feature address at the recent regional symposium on crime lifted the lid on a little-appreciated aspect of the true costs of criminal enterprise.

Underlining what he means by his description of crime as a public health issue, Dr Rowley detailed the minutiae of what treating the victims of crime does to our hospital system.

For the thousands of wounded, victims and perpetrators alike, he revealed a surgical intervention could cost about $170,000 for a head wound; $135,000 for a chest wound; $100,000 for a leg wound, with other kinds of treatment amounting to $40,000.

When we add up such daily costs, it becomes apparent that the real 'budget' to deal with national security is much more than the more than $5 billion allocated per year. It must also include a proportion of the billions spent by the Ministry of Health.

Elsewhere, state agencies also incur tremendous security costs, whether for management of premises or protection of online systems. On a wider level, the private sector, too, has had to match such costs, protect employees and make all manner of special provisions to accommodate the disturbing crime environment.

The economic cost also includes the harder-to-quantify opportunity cost involved when we, as a society, divert scarce resources in attending to all such matters.

Hospitals are already overburdened. Imagine what the impact of having to divert resources to treat wounds relating to crime does to other areas where sick people need surgery and scans and medicines.

There remain to be quantified the losses to our overall economic productivity. If people are afraid of leaving their homes or staying out at nights, that has a clear ripple effect on how business functions and the prospects for growth.

Not only is consumer spending affected, but so too is worker morale.

There has been much discussion about how economic factors feed into the conditions that generate crime. But it is also the case that crime feeds into the factors that slow the economy, resulting in a vicious cycle.

With government after government being forced to attend to this issue, it is clear we are at risk of entering such a cycle - if we are not already there.

Crime stalls the country's development in a way that may be hard ever to recover from. This is especially so for the next generation, many of whom are, increasingly, growing up orphans.

For all of these reasons, the regional political collaboration witnessed this month on the Caricom level must be replicated among private-sector and civil-society interests, not only within TT, but throughout the entire region.

Just as we were forced to close ranks and deal with the covid19 pandemic, so too must we now take strong, collective measures to address perhaps the most dangerous epid