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Article History

Received: 15 April 2026

Accepted: 21 July 2026

First Online: 25 July 2026

Declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate: Prior to starting the data collection, the study was approved by the institutional review board (IRB) of Saint Paul’s Hospital Millennium Medical College (Ref. no: PM23/284) and the School of Pharmacy, Addis Ababa University (Ref. no: ERB/SOP/543/15/2023). A letter of support was sent to the chosen cancer centers. Each study participant provided verbal informed consent. The verbal informed consent was documented by the research team through written records during each interview. Verbal informed consent was used because the study involved interviewer-administered questionnaires and medical record review without invasive procedures, and because documenting written consent could impose an unnecessary burden on participants. The use of verbal informed consent was reviewed and explicitly approved by the respective Institutional Review Boards/Ethics Committees. Involvement in the study was entirely voluntary. No personal identifiers were used in the study; instead, data was analyzed in aggregate. Both patient privacy and confidentiality of the data collected were safeguarded. All study procedures involving human participants were performed in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and national research committees and with the Declaration of Helsinki and its subsequent amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Consent for publication: Not applicable.

Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.