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Article History

Received: 9 November 2021

Accepted: 16 February 2022

First Online: 3 March 2022

Declarations

:

: The ethics approval for the study was obtained from the Institutional Ethics Committee of the State Health Resource Centre, Chhattisgarh [Reference number: SHRC-04-2020]. Because of the pandemic, a phone based survey was approved. The ethics approval included the detailed protocol for obtaining and documenting the informed consent of participants for the telephonic interviews. The consent form was read out to each participant. The interview was started only when an explicit consent was provided by each participant. A log was maintained for every call—name of caller, date and time, note that the prescribed text was used for asking consent, record of participant’s response and signature of caller. In order to ensure confidentiality, an in-house call-centre was used. The callers were trained rigorously in the protocol for asking informed consent and documenting it. The calls were supervised closely to ensure adherence to the protocol. The log of each caller was examined and signed daily by the concerned supervisor. The dataset was completely anonymised.

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare that there are no competing interests.