[Public health problems in old age]

The health problems affecting the elderly in Spain over the last few years of the twentieth century have been complied and analyzed. Of outstanding important are the problems of a social nature, in the form of mandatory retirement, at time early retirement, insufficient economic means and the lack of esteem and love from which the elderly suffer. The aid of Health Education in different target groups to attempt to achieve changes in the amount of knowledge and the attitudes towards old age and death, which will lead to more kindly social conduct and behavior with regard to the elderly, is proposed.