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Article History

Received: 9 May 2021

Accepted: 26 October 2021

First Online: 7 November 2021

Declarations

:

: The European Commission applied its Ethics Scrutiny Process for Horizon 2020 projects to the MOCHA project, and agreed that except for identified specific tasks not covered in this paper, full ethical approval was not needed, as no personal data were being collected. Country agents were recruited for the H2020 project and paid to deliver qualitative and quantitative data on child health issues in their countries; they are aware of the intention to publish analyses based on the material they supplied. There is consent to use and publish the data. It is also made explicit in the project grant agreement. There was no formal requirement to approve the MOCHA study by ethics committees from each country, as the data collected by country agents referred to in this study were publicly available in their national languages. The European Commission Ethical Scrutiny verified this position before the grant was approved. The Ethical Committee of the European Commission's DG Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 programme waived the need for ethical approval for the whole study. The country agents were part of the study included in that waiver.

: Country agents were recruited for the H2020 project and paid to deliver qualitative and quantitative data on child health issues in their countries. There is consent to use and publish the data. It is also made explicit in the project grant agreement. There was no formal requirement to approve the MOCHA study by ethics committees from each country, as the data collected by country agents were publicly available in their national languages. The European Commission Ethical Scrutiny verified this position before the grant was approved.

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.