The morbidity or morbidity rate refers to the proportion of people in a specific location that are subject to illness and disease. People often mistake the mortality and morbidity rate as being the same thing. Unlike the mortality rate, morbidity only refers to the rate of illness, and does not include death caused by the illness. Morbidity is also often used as another word for diseases or illness.
The morbidity or morbidity rate of an area refers to how often disease occurs in a specific area. Unlike mortality rate, which refers to the rate of death in the area, morbidity rate only counts the frequency of disease and not death caused by the disease. Any disease or illness from the common cold to cancer can be considered as a morbidity and a person can be a victim of multiple morbidities at once.