Abstract: The global burden of diseases, due to medical disorders is enormous with wide geographical variations. Periodic reviews of morbidity and mortality could show new trends and may provide information for the planning and evaluation of country’s health care delivery services. Ideally, national registration of deaths should provide this data but such are not readily available in many developing countries and in hospital review of deaths is then a viable option. We retrospectively studied causes of deaths at the medical wards of the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital, Nigeria between January 1996 and December 2005 (10 years). Seventeen thousand six hundred and fifty patients were admitted during the study period, out of which 4220 consisting of 1596 females (37.8%) and 2624 males (62.2%) died, giving a mortality rate of 23.9%. The male to female ratio was 1.6:1. Infections were responsible for 1501 deaths (35.6%) with Tuberculosis (TB) and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) either alone or as co-infection being the commonest (16.5%). Chronic medical diseases such as stroke (8.8%), chronic liver disease (6.64%), heart failure (5.4%), chronic kidney failure (5.3%) and diabetes mellitus (4.99%) were next to infections. Cancers (7.1%) contributed significantly to mortality in our patients. There were few deaths from malaria (0.14%), typhoid fever (0.99%), tetanus (1.8%) and coronary artery disease (0.14%). Community interventions targeted at interrupting transmission of these infections and population screening for early detection of hypertension, diabetes, chronic kidney disease and cancers should be vigorously pursued.