Socioeconomics and Water Use Sanitation Behaviours Among People In The Downstream Area Of Musi River, Palembang, South Sumatera, Indonesia

Abstract

Water use sanitation behaviors are one of the most important aspects towards sustainable healthy lives in which every year approximately two to three million people die because of poor sanitation. The study aimed to determine the water use sanitation behaviors and the association between socioeconomic status and water use sanitation behaviors. An analytical cross-sectional study was conducted by administration of structured questionnaire interview. Simple random sampling was applied to select 215 samples from 817 population based on six sampling points. Multiple logistic regressions were performed for data analysis. Almost all of the samples were male 97.21% (209 respondents). The mean age was 35.66 ±8.20 years old. The education background of the respondents was mostly graduate from the secondary education (73.49%) while 67.91% of them had monthly income less than Rp.2,000,000,- (149 US dollars). The majority of the samples were farmers or laborers (51.6%) in which 53.9% of them had high level of knowledge on water use sanitation while 49.77% had inadequate knowledge. However, most of the respondents had appropriate perception on how treat unsafe water (68.37%). As high as 78.14 % (95% CI: 72 to 83) of respondents had inappropriate water use sanitation behaviors. The multivariate analysis indicated that poor attitude on water use sanitation was statistically significant in association with inappropriate water use sanitation behaviors (Adj. OR=2.14; 95% CI: 1.03-4.45; p-value = 0.040). Those with lower monthly income had poorer sanitation behaviors (Adj. OR = 0.14; 95% CI: 0.040.51;

p-value < 0.001). Those who completed the secondary or higher education level had better water use sanitation behaviors than those only completed the primary education level (Adj. OR=0.09;95% CI: 0.01-0.73; P-value < 0.001). Most of people living in the downstream area of Musi River practiced inappropriate water use sanitation behaviors and brought damages such as pollution in the river. Improvement on social economic status and attitude towards water use sanitation behaviors should help improving the situations.