Background. Respiratory complaints are commonly encountered in medicine and respiratory diseases place a high burden on healthcare infrastructure. Healthcare planning should be based on adequate information: this study will help us to analyze the pattern of respiratory disease admissions in the medical wards in a developing country. Methods. The medical records of patients admitted into the medical wards over a 5-year period were retrieved and reviewed. Information obtained included demography, diagnosis, comorbid conditions, and risk factors for respiratory disease. Results. Three thousand four hundred and ninety patients were admitted into the medical wards with 325 (9.3%) of them diagnosed with a respiratory condition. There were 121 females and 204 males. The average age of the patients was 40.7 ± 14.7 years. Only 7% of the patients smoked cigarette. The commonest respiratory conditions were tuberculosis (66.8%) and pneumonia (24.9%). The commonest comorbidity was HIV infection (39.7%). Tuberculosis/HIV coinfection rate was 50.7%. HIV infection was the single most important predictor of an adverse outcome (OR 5.1, 95% CI 2.05–12.7, ). Conclusion. Infective conditions make up a large percentage of respiratory diseases in low income countries with HIV infection constituting a significant risk factor for a poor disease outcome. 1. Introduction Respiratory complaints such as cough and catarrh are some of the commonest symptoms encountered in medicine. This is due in part to the large surface area; nearly 70？m2 of the lungs present to the atmosphere [1]. The atmosphere that we breathe is more than just “air.” In reality, it is a complex mixture of ambient gases and environmental particulates to which pathogen containing droplets are added when respiratory secretions are coughed or sneezed out by others. Respiratory diseases constitute a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. The top four respiratory diseases, lower respiratory tract infections, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), tuberculosis, and lung cancer, are among the ten leading causes of death worldwide [2]. In Africa, lower respiratory tract infection and tuberculosis are ranked 2nd and 8th, respectively [3]. In developed countries, respiratory diseases feature prominently in the top ten causes of morbidity and mortality [4–7]. In Nigeria, lower respiratory tract infections constituted the second leading cause of death in all age brackets in 2002, a year in which TB was the seventh leading cause of death, accounting for 4% of all deaths [8]. In India another developing
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