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Article History

Received: 7 September 2018

Accepted: 29 April 2019

First Online: 8 May 2019

Ethics approval and consent to participate

: The study used three rounds of the nationally representative Demographic and Health Survey for Malawi (MDHS) conducted in 2000, 2004/2005 and 2011. The survey is part of the global MEASURE DHS programme, which is carried out in more than 40 developing countries. MDHS data collection procedures were approved by the ICF Macro, the Malawi’s National Health Sciences Research Committee (NHSRC) and written informed consent was obtained from respondents at the start of the individual interviews []. Permission to use the data was obtained from Measure DHS, which is a USAID-funded project that assists and fund population and health surveys in low and middle-income countries. No, further ethical approval was necessary specifically for this study since the data was based on anonymous public data with no identifiable information on survey respondents.This study is part of the PhD thesis project for MM entitled-Making under-resourced health systems work for vulnerable mothers and children: Antenatal care in Malawi. The ethics approval for the PhD thesis was obtained from Stellenbosch University research ethics committee (REC). The reference number is 2018–1701.

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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