Physical environment of houses as determinants of pneumonia among children in country sides

Pneumonia is an acute infection of the lung tissue (alveoli) most prevalent in infants. Home physical environment that does not meet the health requirements is to trigger the occurrence of the disease. This study aims to determine the relationship between the home physical environment with pneumonia in infants.

The method used is a case-control with an analytical approach. 60 respondents are selected where 30 respondents serve as a treatment group, and the rest is as a control one. The research was conducted in Baturaden, Banyumas Regency, Central Java, Indonesia. The variables studied are living room ventilation width, window width, wall type, floor types, and room‘ occupation density. The research employs Chi-Square test to find the relationship between variables.

The results showed the physical environment of the house that has a significant relationship with the incidence of pneumonia among children.

Since the physical environment of the house still risk factors for pneumonia ignored by the community, the community health center must play more active roles in disseminating the information to the society about the importance of proper physical environment condition.