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Article History

Received: 23 April 2021

Accepted: 15 March 2022

First Online: 8 April 2022

Declarations

:

: All methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations in the ethical approval and consent to participate<b>.</b> FGD participants provided written informed consent. The two KI participants provided verbal informed consent, consistent with Ecuadorian law and international standards established in the Declaration of Helsinki for minimal risk research, where the principles of informed consent, voluntary participation, privacy, and anonymity are assured and respected. This study was: (a) approved by two appropriate ethics committees; (b) did not involve new clinical tools and procedures; (c) obtained informed consent without involving vulnerable groups or personally identifiable data; (d) did not involve human embryos, gametes, and stem cells; (e) appropriately takes into account sex and gender; (f) did not involve animals; (g) did not involve plants; and (h) did not involve palaeontological and geological material. Furthermore, in this qualitative research, the issue of “institutional biosafety and biosecurity protocols and any national or international recommendations relevant to the research field” was not relevant.The study was approved by: (a) the IRB of the USFQ (the full name is “<i>Comité de “Ética de Investigación en Seres Humanos</i> or Ethics Committed for Research in Human Beings” and (b) the Institutional Review Board of the University of California, Berkeley.Thus, this study followed the guidelines established by (a) the IRB of the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, which is recognized by the Ecuadorian Ministry of Public Health—and is subject to Ecuadorian law and is also registered with the US Federalwide Assurance and (b) the Institutional Review Board of the University of California, Berkeley, which follows US FDA and NIH regulations regarding bioethics.

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.