[Education for health and for death]

The development of the concept of health education has evolved. Man in good health is he who succeeds in adapting to the varying conditions in his environment (physical, biological, and psycho-social). To say that man sustains the changes in his physical environment does not mean he adapts well to his psychosocial environment, for the latter is much more difficult to do. Individual death is only an element in the endless chain which is life. An individual can disappear, but the species continues, despite everything, to carry on. The author specifies that the fear of death enters in the health education domain; this is in the back of our anxieties and shapes our way of confronting life and our attitudes when dealing with others. To learn to live is necessary to us. However it is also necessary to learn to die to accept death and to demistify it, thus limiting the anxiety which is caused by it.