WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE ...

. . . between mortality and morbidity?

THE word morbid, broadly, means ‘sickly’ or ‘unhealthy’. Morbidity, as a medical term, can refer to a disease or its effects. For instance, cancer is itself a morbidity, and it causes morbidity – such as pain throughout the body. A person with a number of illnesses is said to have ‘co-morbidities’.

Morbidity is also used to talk about the health of a population – the proportion of people within a geographical area with a sickness or disease.

Mortality is another term for death. A mortality rate is the number of deaths due to a disease divided by the total population.