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Abstract
Circumcision is a common simple surgical procedure in childhood, especially in a Moslem country. The purpose of this study was to investigate parental knowledge about circumcision and the relationship between knowledge and behavior. This was a cross-sectional analytical research study using questionnaires as the primary data. The research sample was taken using purpose sampling from 224 respondents in this charity event. The results showed that 68.8% of respondents had sufficient knowledge of circumcision and 31.3% of respondents had less. 37.1% of the respondents had consistent behavior towards time of the circumcision and 62.9% of the respondents not. There is no significant relationship between parents' knowledge and behavior towards time of the circumcision with a value of p = 0.75.
Keywords: Behavior, circumcision, knowledge, parent, social service
Introduction
Circumcision is a surgical procedure to cut the foreskin of the penis or prepuce (1-3). Circumcision is one of the most frequent performed surgeries in the world (4). Some of the reasons for circumcision are medical indications, health promotion for disease prevention, religious beliefs, customs or culture and aesthetics (2-8). Studies have showed that approximately one third of the global male population has been circumcised and about 665 million males older than 15 years old have been circumcised (9). The majority are Muslims (9). AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) has published that there are more health benefits for male infants who performed circumcision compared to the risks (3). In addition, the specific benefit of circumcision is to reduce the risk of urinary tract infection, human immunodeficiency infection viruses (HIV), sexually transmitted diseases and penile cancer (3, 7). The World Health Organization and the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS recommend countries to include circumcision as a comprehensive HIV prevention strategy (3, 6, 7).
All over the world, circumcision is generally carried out on infants and children (10). Infants and children cannot make their own decisions on this procedure and therefore parents makee the decision (10, 11). The purpose of this study was to measure whether the parents have good knowledge about circumcision and the correlation of knowledge and behavior of parents towards the determination of circumcision itself.
Methods
This is an analytic study with cross-sectional research design. The research samples were participants' parents of the charity...