Morbidity vs. Mortality

Was listening to radio the other day and the announcer was talking about morbidity and mortality, but was incorrectly mixing them together.

Morbidity refers to the disease state of an individual or the incidence of illness in a population. Morbidity scores or predicted morbidity are assigned to ill patients with the help of systems. Morbidity scores help decide the kind of treatment or medicine that should be given to the patient. Predicted morbidity describes the morbidity of patients, and is also useful when comparing two sets of patients or different time points in hospitals. The general definition of morbidity is the state of being unhealthy or diseased.

Mortality refers to the state of being mortal, or the number of deaths in a population. If you refer to the infant mortality rate, you would be referring to the mathematical equation of dividing the number of infant deaths by the number of live births.

Definition Morbidity refers to the state of being diseased or unhealthy within a population.

Mortality is the term used for the number of people who died within a population and incidence of death or the number of deaths in a population.