Relationship of Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Community with Malaria Incidence in Sub-district of West Walenrang District of Luwu, Province of South Sulawesi, Indonesia

Abstract

Malaria is a global health issue and a serious problem since the beginning of the discovery until present. One of the region's still high endemicity of malaria is Asia Pacific. According to WHO, in this region occurred 25 million cases and 50,000 deaths per year. One of the countries in this region are quite high malaria endemicity is Indonesia, which occurred 40,000 cases per year. As for regions in Indonesia are still malaria is endemic cover Papua, Maluku, Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and several smaller islands. Even though, the government has organized various programs in order to control the spread of malaria, such as malaria eradication, malaria control and elimination of malaria. The low ranking of knowledge, attitudes and practices of communities to control malaria on suspected as government less effective so that the large programs that has developed the cause. This is true because the program execution system dominated government closed the public opportunity to participate in the program, so that at the same time the knowledge, attitudes and deeds cannot develop properly. As this situation has the potential to be a challenge for the government in an effort to create control program that integrated and comprehensive in the future. This research aims to know the relationship between knowledge, attitude and practice of people with malaria events. This study also used a quantitative approach to analyze a cross sectional study the results of the interview with selected respondents, namely 86 families residing in the area of research. The results show that there is a relationship between knowledge, attitude and practice with the incidence of malaria in the sub district of West Walenrang, districts of Luwu, Province of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. The incidence of malaria including weak category as for the strength of relationship between knowledge, attitude and practices. Based on these results, it is suggested to the government would give adequate attention to the improvement of knowledge, attitudes and practices of the community in malaria control program. Level of knowledge, attitudes and practices of community that adequate can be a modal to save the sustainable program of malaria control program conducted. On the other side, this approach can also be a smart solution on limited of the government in controlling the spread of malaria, both human and budget resources.