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Article History

Received: 30 May 2024

Accepted: 3 January 2025

First Online: 16 January 2025

Declarations

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: The protocol for this retrospective study was approved (Ethics No. M170866) by the Human Research Ethics Committee, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa in accordance with the Singapore Statement. The South African Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU), University of Cape Town carries out the survey for data used in this study. In the users’ documented manual it has the following statement of informed consent and assent from survey participants []. “Paper consent forms are issued in all languages and the informed consent process is conducted in the respondent’s language of choice. For each questionnaire, two sets of consent forms are signed. One signed copy remains with respondents and the other is returned to SALDRU. These forms carry unique bar-coded numbers that are entered into the CAPI system. Similarly, the household and person level IDs are displayed on the CAPI system and written onto the consent forms so that cross-referencing is possible. Data coming in from the field are accepted as valid only if SALDRU has a signed consent form for each interview that produced the data. If signed consent forms are not located, the associated interviews are deleted from the dataset.” “Youth care consent form is signed for young adults (15–17 years old) by the young adult's caregiver. In addition, assent forms are signed by the young adults themselves.”The data used in this study are publicly available and do not need any further informed consent from the survey participants as this is not practically feasible since these data have no identification that can be directly linked to the participants.

: The authors consent to publication by the Journal—Discover Public Health, as no data or results in this manuscript have been previously published or are under consideration elsewhere.

: The authors declare no competing interests.