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morbidity — English
The state of ill-health or disease in a community. Since absolute figures of ill people are not really helpful and cannot form a base for comparison with other areas or communities, a morbidity rate is usually calculated to describe the state of ill-health in a community. Many different morbidity rates can be calculated, and health authorities have to select the one that best suits their purpose. If 10 out of every 1 000 people in a certain community, are ill, while 25 out of every 1 000 in another community are ill, we can make valid inferences about the health status of these communities. But there are numerous complicating factors, for instance whether all the people are equally ill, whether they have been ill for comparable periods, and whether all the diagnoses are equally reliable. Consequently, comparisons must be made with caution. In the geography of health (or medical geography) the collection of data is extremely difficult, and medical geographers often share a well-known jocular saying, namely “eye-ball your data real close”.
