Discrimination against HIV/AIDS patients and associated factors among women in East African countries: using the most recent DHS data (2015-2022).

"Declarations Ethics approval and consent to participateThe study was conducted after obtaining a permission letter from www.dhsprogram.com on an online request to access east African DHS data after reviewing the brief descriptions of the survey submitted to the DHS program. The data sets were treated with the utmost confidence. This study was done based on secondary data from East Africa's DHS. Issues related to informed consent, confidentiality, anonymity, and privacy of the study participants are already handled ethically by the DHS office. We did not manipulate and apply the microdata other than in this study. There was no patient or public involvement in this study. All the methods were performed based on the declaration of Helsinki. Consent for publicationNot applicable. Competing interestsThe authors declared that there are no competing interests. Competing interests The authors declared that there are no competing interests."

"Funding This study was not supported financially by anyone."