Abouchadi, Saloua
Godin, Isabelle
Zhang, Wei-Hong
De Brouwere, Vincent
Funding for this research was provided by:
Belgian Development Cooperation (FA3-III, FA3-III)
FP7 People: Marie-Curie Actions (612216, 612216)
Ministry of Health, Morocco
Article History
Received: 27 March 2022
Accepted: 5 November 2022
First Online: 18 November 2022
Declarations
:
: All methods were conducted in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations. The Institutional Review Board of the Institute of Tropical Medicine of Antwerp, Belgium (No 1165/17) and the Ethics Committee for Biomedical Research of the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy of Rabat, Morocco (No 84/17) approved the study on ethical ground including the process for obtaining verbal consent to participate in research. Before beginning interviews, the PI informed the participant about the objective of the study, his/her participation on a voluntary basis, and that anonymity would be ensured. She asked participants for verbal consent before recording discussions. Two student midwives were recruited and paid as freelancers to transcribe the interviews at the PI’s office under her supervision. To preserve the study participants’ anonymity, we have chosen to refrain from giving more details on the study participants and the IDIs study settings. Each region has been given a code.
: Not applicable.
: The authors declare that they have no competing interests. The position of SA as the head of Morocco’s National Unit of Maternal Mortality Surveillance was not a hierarchical one. In that position, she was officially assigned the responsibility for monitoring MDSS activities at the national level. This role was extremely helpful in accessing the data and obtaining authorization to conduct interviews. We should mention that her thesis promoter (VDB) verified the whole data collection and analysis processes.Interviews were conducted with regional and district-level actors whose names were drawn up by health-region officials. For most participants, the interviews were their initial contact with the PI. She gave no incentives to compensate for routine activities. Incentives are the responsibility of the managers in the health regions. If funds were available, it offered to cover the travel costs of personnel once surveillance and review activities were completed.The position of SA does not alter her adherence to all BMC Public Health policies on sharing data and materials.