Lethality

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Lethality

Lethality (/lɪˈθælɪti/), also known as fatalness or deadliness, is a term used in medicine and public health to describe the capacity of a substance, action, or disease to cause death.

Etymology

The term "lethality" originates from the Latin word "letalitas", which means "deadly" or "fatal". It is derived from "letum", meaning "death", and "-alis", a suffix indicating relation or pertaining to.

Related Terms

  • Mortality rate: The measure of the number of deaths in a particular population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit of time.
  • Morbidity: Refers to having a disease or a symptom of disease, or to the amount of disease within a population.
  • Virulence: A pathogen's or microbe's ability to cause damage to a host.
  • Toxicity: The degree to which a substance can damage an organism.
  • Pathogenicity: The ability of an organism to cause disease.

Usage in Medicine

In medicine, lethality is often used to refer to the death rate, or the number of deaths compared to the total number of individuals within a population. It is also used to describe the potency of a substance or the severity of a disease in causing death. For example, a highly lethal disease is one that causes death in a high proportion of those affected.

Usage in Public Health

In public health, lethality is used to measure the impact of a disease on a population. This is often measured in terms of the number of deaths per unit of population, usually per 1,000 or 100,000 individuals. This measure is used to compare the impact of different diseases and to guide public health interventions.

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