Document is current

Article History

Received: 23 October 2024

Accepted: 31 December 2024

First Online: 7 January 2025

Declarations

:

: We sent an online free request to the DHS programmer to obtain ethical approval and permission through . The original DHS data of each country was collected by adhering to the international and ethical guidelines after receiving approved ethical clearance from the ICF Macro Institute Review Board, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Institute Review Board (IRB) from every country in line with the United States Department of Health and Human Services requirement for human participant protection. In addition, during the data collection process. All the study participants and/or their legal guardians of minors (age less than 16) gave written informed consent to participate. All the procedures were done according to the Helsinki declaration. Confidentiality was maintained through not disclosing the information obtained from the DHS dataset to a third party. Furthermore, the present study is not an experimental study. A further detailed description of how the DHSs uses data and its ethical clearance can be found at.

: It is not applicable for this study since the current study used a secondary data analysis done by the Central Statistical Agency of the countries.

: The authors declare no competing interests.