PRISMA Checklist for "What do we know about ancillary care practices in East and Southern Africa? A systematic review and meta-synthesis."

Despite growing calls for the provision of ancillary care to study participants during medical research, there remains a noticeable gap in ethical guidelines for medical researchers in resource-constrained settings (RCS). We reviewed recent studies to determine the extent to which ancillary care is provided in East and Southern Africa and to examine the ethical justifications researchers provide to support their views on ancillary care obligations. <br>A systematic search for qualitative and mixed methods studies on ancillary care was conducted across MEDLINE, Embase, African Wide Information, PubMed, CINAHL Plus, and Scopus. The NIH Department of Bioethics and H3 Africa websites and Google Scholar were further searched. Studies conducted in East and Southern Africa between 2004 and 2020, as well as those that reported on ancillary care provided to study participants were included. All studies included in this review were evaluated for methodological quality as well as bias risk. NVivo version 12 was used for thematic analysis.Since this study utilised a secondary synthesis of data, which is already in the public domain, ethical approvals, and consent to participate were not necessary.<br>