Mortality rate is a measure of the number of eaths (in general, or due to a specific cause) in some population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit time. Mortality rate is typically expressed in units of deaths per 1000 individuals per year; thus, a mortality rate of 9.5 in a population of 100,000 would mean 950 deaths per year in that entire population. It is distinct from morbidity rate, which refers to the number of individuals who have contracted a disease during a given time period (the incidence rate) or the number who currently have that disease (the prevalence rate), scaled to the size of the population.