Death education has just found its way into the Health Education and curriculum of Nigerian universities and so requires some baseline empirical data on students' death attitudes. The sample consisted of 311 students selected from six Nigerian universities that offered Health Education. Three research questions answered with statistical means and two null-hypotheses tested with two-tailed t-test and ANOVA guided the study. The Hoelter multidimensional fear of Death Scale (MFODS) and Templer's Death Anxiety Scale (DAS) were instruments for determining students' death fear and anxiety respectively with gender and death experience as the independent variables. Results showed that the students' generally had negative death attitudes with females showing greater non-significant negative death attitudes than males. Death experience made no difference as a variable. The implications of these findings particularly for health education were proffered.

The death-awareness movement is new in Nigeria. Here the subject of death is still a taboo. Throughout history women have occupied the middle place between life and death. They understand and play their gender roles in several other aspects of life in the Nigerian home, but down play their roles as they concern death and dying. This article, therefore, offers a rationale for death education in the home and delineates the role of a mother with regard to death. The likely problems she may encounter in the course of discharging her death duties in the home are also identified.

In D. Leviton's (1991) conception of horrendous death, a poorly managed environment can contribute to widespread mortality, and the deaths so caused can further create an environment for subsequent death. The African environment in particular is characterized by a number of "deathogenic" factors that must be understood and confronted by health educators committed to minimizing or eliminating the impact of horrendous death on the African continent. In this comment, the author argues that attention to characteristic but preventable forms of death in the African context can lead to greater public advocacy among African health educators, contributing to the physical and psychological well-being of the populations they serve.