Dictionary:

morbidity

  (môr-bĭd'ĭ-tē)

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1. The quality of being morbid; morbidness.
2. The rate of incidence of a disease.

Frequency of illness, sickness, and diseases contracted.

The state of being diseased. Can be used as an outcome measure such as number of decayed, missing, and filled teeth.

Ill-health. Morbidity rates are of two types: the prevalence rate, which gives the numbers suffering from a specific condition at any one time, and the incidence rate, which gives the number of individuals suffering from a particular condition within a given period of time, usually one year. Regional variations in morbidity are of interest to medicinal geographers, and may indicate regional differences in living standards and life-styles. At the time of writing, attention is focused on the fact that the incidence of bowel cancer is higher in Scotland than in the rest of the UK, and the incidence of breast cancer is higher in the UK than in the rest of Europe.

The condition of being diseased.

• proportional m. — the proportion of all of the diseased animals in the population that have the particular disease under discussion.
• m. rate — the ratio of diseased to healthy animals in the population. The ratio is said to be standardized when it is expressed as a proportion of the expected rate compared with a standard group. It is also expressed as a proportional rate when it is stated as a proportion of all of the cases of illness due to all causes in the group.

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