Fukunaga, R. http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6623-7877
Morof, D.
Blanton, C.
Ruiz, A.
Maro, G.
Serbanescu, F.
Funding for this research was provided by:
Bloomberg Philanthropies (NA)
Article History
Received: 8 July 2019
Accepted: 9 January 2020
First Online: 21 February 2020
Ethics approval and consent to participate
: The Kigoma Reproductive Health Survey (RHS) is a part of a larger external evaluation of the Maternal and Reproductive Health in Tanzania project. The study protocol was approved by the Tanzania National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), complied with Tanzania procedures for protecting human rights in research, and was deemed non-research by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Human Research Protection Office of the Center for Global Health.Informed consent was obtained in accordance with the Tanzania NIMR procedures that allow for verbal consent due to high illiteracy rates. Prior to beginning asking questions in selected households, interviewers read to all household respondents a statement including the purpose of the study, why it is important to participate, how the interview will be conducted, interview duration, how the data will be protected, and how all answers are voluntary. The respondent verbal consent was recorded in the paper questionnaire by the interviewer, shown to the respondent and attested by signature of the interviewer, and date and time of the consent. The interviewer read to the household respondent the following statement: UnorderedList removedSimilarly, a separate verbal consent was obtained from all women aged 15–49 in selected households. Only those who provided consent after they were made aware about the purpose and public health importance of the study, interview duration, confidentiality, voluntary participation and right to not answer any or all questions were interviewed. Each consent was recorded, shown to the respondent, and attested by the signature of the interviewer, including date and time of the consent. Prior to the beginning of the individual questionnaire, the interviewer read to each eligible woman the following introduction and consent statement: UnorderedList removedInterviews of women aged 15–17 did not require parental consent. For this study, need for parental consent was waived by the Tanzanian National Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) during the ethical approval of the protocol NIMR/HQ/R.8a/Vol. IX/1696 on March 19th, 2014. Every care was taken to ensure the privacy and confidentiality of the interviews for all respondents and the study data.Prior to visiting facilities, communities, and households, teams sought written approval from the Tanzania Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, the Elderly and Children (MoHCDGEC), Reproductive and Child Health section (MoHCDGEC/RCH) and regional and district authorities including ward and village leaders. Letters were sent from MoHCDGEC/RCH describing the activity and its approval.All field personnel, including data collectors and field work staff signed a “confidentiality pledge”. This was intended as an extra measure to protect confidentiality and anonymity of the respondents. All data were stored on password protected hard drives, with access permitted to the research personnel only. Prior to analysis, the data processing specialists removed personally-identifiable information, such as the name of the parish and village and names of the household members on the household rosters. Raw data—paper forms and electronic copies of the original databases—were kept for three years following the study completion, after which they were destroyed.Findings from this evaluation were used for subsequent program decision-making by the funding institution, Bloomberg Philanthropies. Reports and recommendations were shared with the MoHCDGEC and regional representatives, the funder, and the implementing partners.
: The ethics committees did not require the project to seek consent for publication from individual participants. Our study was based on anonymized data with no identifiable information on survey respondents. Written consent was obtained for each individual in each household, who provided their information voluntarily, was informed about confidentiality of the study, and approved the use of information for improving public health and clinical practices. The manuscript does not include details, images, or videos relating to individual participants.
: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.