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Article History

Received: 29 June 2020

Accepted: 21 October 2020

First Online: 18 November 2020

Ethics approval and consent to participate

: National and local health, educational and administrative authorities were comprehensively in-formed of the study. Prior to the start of the study in each village, open public meetings were carried out in the local language followed by question and answer sessions with the survey team. The purpose of the study was explained to all schoolchildren, and verbal consent was obtained from the children themselves. It was explained that any child had the chance to withdraw from the study at any point, without any consequence. Written informed consent was also obtained from school headmasters. Due to the high rate of illiteracy among these communities, finger-print consent was obtained from all participants and parents or legal guardians of the children. The study protocol has been approved by the National Ethics Committee in Niger (ref 012/2010/CCNE) and Imperial College Research Ethics Committee (ref ICREC_8_2_2). In addition to these, the University of Georgia institutional review board IRB implemented an administrative human subjects review and issued additional approval 10533-0 for Niger. Informed consent was obtained from parents or legal guardians of all pupils involved in the study and verbal consent was also obtained from all adults included. The purpose of the study was explained to education and health authorities. All results in the datasets were anonymous and coded to prevent association with the individual participant.

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.