POPULATION BEHAVIOR AS A CHALLENGE TOWARD RABIES CONTROL PROGRAM IN WEST SUMATRA

Abstrak

Rabies is geographically distributed in 8 provinces in Indonesia and its endemicity is quite   related to the educational level of the dog owners. The more  lower  of the population education.  it  seems  that the personal   hygienic  is worsen,  and their  dog immunization  coverage is  far less than 80% of dog population as recommended by World Health Organization, WHO. The objective  of study  is  to determine  the relationship between  the dog owner  family education  level   and their  behavior  toward rabies  control  program  activity.  This  study  is  designed  as Cross Sectional   method and sampled by multistage procession, where the houshold sample was taken randomly from the high and the low endemicity of rabies. The dog owner was interviewed based on the prepared written questionnaire. The result of the study showed that the majority of the respondent  population were low educational  level  where 73.0%   in  the cities   and 49.0%   in lhe villages  not  even passing the public school. Rabies transmission is known by 94.4% of the respondents  respectively  and 93.0% of them knew about  rabies prevention by vaccination coverage among  rabies transmitter animal was only 33.1 %.  Educational  level  is significantly   associated   with tha dog owners behavior  with  p<0.05,  (p:0.000). It is  hoping,   this  study regarding  the rabies  control  program  will pay a valuable contribution in term of the dog oqwner  knowledge   improvement  by public health education  which will   be given  by the public  health  educator.  Boar Hunter Clubs,  local  village   key persons,  or maybe by the religion leader.