The Relationship Between Mothers’ Knowledge about PHBS, Stunting, and Nutrition with Helminth Infection among Toddlers in Jember

Abstract

Helminth infections are still a problem in the world. According to WHO, children aged 1-4 years have a high morbidity of helminthic infections. The number of helminth infections in children is influenced by several factors, including PHBS (Clean and Healthy Living Behavior). In addition, children who are stunted or malnourished are prone to Helminth infections. This can be prevented with the role of the mother's knowledge regarding PHBS, stunting, and nutrition. This study aims to analyze the relationship between mother's knowledge about PHBS, stunting, and nutrition with Helminths in toddlers in Jelbuk District, Jember Regency. This research has a type of observational analytic research with a cross-sectional design. The population consists of mothers with toddlers aged 12-59 months in Jelbuk District, Jember Regency. The sampling technique used consecutive sampling and obtained 69 mothers. Knowledge was obtained from interviews using a questionnaire. Helminth infections in toddlers are obtained from stool examination using flotation techniques. Data analysis using Mann Whitney. The results showed that there were 4 toddlers (5.7%) who had Helminth infections. 3 toddlers were infected with Ascaris lumbricoides (4.34%), and the rest were hook Helminths (1.44%). The majority of mothers have good knowledge on all indicators of knowledge of PHBS and nutrition but lack of knowledge on stunting. Analysis using the Mann-Whitney test showed that there was a relationship with Helminths only on 2 indicators of PHBS, namely smoking (Sig. 2-tailed=0.036) and house cleanliness (Sig. 2-tailed=0.027). The conclusion of this study is that there is a relationship between knowledge of house hygiene and smoking with Helminths in children and there is no relationship between knowledge of health behavior, stunting, and nutrition. However, the results of this study need to be strengthened by further research because there are not too many research samples and improvements to the questionnaire used so that the results are more valid.