National Infection Prevention & Control Strategic Plan 2025-2030

Objectives

The National Infection Prevention and Control Strategic Plan 2025-2030 seeks to institutionalise sustainable, evidence-based infection prevention and control (IPC) as a core function of Pakistan’s health system, spanning public and private primary, secondary and tertiary care, clinics, diagnostic centres and community-based services.[1][2]It aims to protect patients, healthcare workers and communities; reduce healthcare-associated infections; contain antimicrobial resistance; improve quality and safety of care; and reinforce health security and emergency resilience.[3][4]The plan is aligned with the International Health Regulations (2005), Pakistan’s National Action Plan for Health Security 2024-2028, and the World Health Organization Global IPC Action Plan and Monitoring Framework 2024-2030.[5][1]

• Institutionalise IPC programmes, governance arrangements, trained personnel and predictable financing at every level of care, supported by accountability, equity, innovation and continuous improvement.[1][6]

• Standardise and periodically update national IPC guidance, translate it into facility-level standard operating procedures, and disseminate multilingual information, education and communication materials.[7][8]

• Establish a standardised national healthcare-associated infection surveillance and response system that improves detection, recording, reporting, analysis, laboratory confirmation, outbreak response and feedback.[7][9]

• Strengthen workforce capacity through pre-service and in-service education, standardised curricula, certification, e-learning, continuing professional education and integration of IPC into academic curricula.[10][11]

• Apply World Health Organization multimodal IPC strategies combining system change, essential infrastructure and supplies, training, communication, audit and feedback, leadership engagement, patient-safety culture and accountability.[12][13]

• Improve water, sanitation and hygiene, facility design, ventilation, decontamination and sterilisation, isolation capacity, essential supplies, waste management, safe injection practices and personal protective equipment.[14][15][16]

• Protect healthcare workers through occupational health programmes, infectious-hazard controls, post-exposure procedures, incident reporting, workplace risk assessment and access to required vaccines, including hepatitis B vaccination.[17][18]

• Advance equitable access to safe care, particularly for vulnerable and underserved populations, and engage patients, communities and community health workers in infection prevention.[6][16]

• Promote One Health collaboration across human health, veterinary, agriculture, water and sanitation, environmental and climate-related sectors to address IPC and antimicrobial resistance jointly.[6][19]

Implementation

Implementation is designed as a phased, system-wide programme for 2025-2030, moving IPC from reactive practice to an integrated routine health-service function.[3][2]It combines national policy and coordination, provincial and district implementation, and facility-level operational delivery through governance structures, workforce development, surveillance, supervision, regulatory measures and resource provision.[7][20]The National Institute of Health leads and coordinates national efforts as Pakistan’s International Health Regulations focal point, working to promote interprovincial synergy and engagement with development partners.[5]

• Establish or strengthen national, provincial or regional, district and facility-level IPC units, cells, steering committees, technical working groups, multidisciplinary committees, IPC teams and focal persons with defined mandates and authority.[7][20]

• Assign responsibilities across the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination, National Institute of Health, provincial health ministries and departments, district health offices, hospital administrations, health regulatory authorities, professional councils, public health laboratories, healthcare facilities and development partners.[20][9]

• Review or formulate legislation and Minimum Service Delivery Standards to support IPC programmes, worker safety, patient care, working conditions, regulatory compliance and accountability.[7][9]

• Develop annual IPC programme reviews, workplans and improvement plans, integrate IPC into routine budgets and service-delivery models, and prepare PC-1 proposals and dedicated facility budget lines.[7][8]

• Deliver ongoing, evidence-based training and certification for healthcare workers, supported by national curricula, facility training, capacity-building workshops, e-learning and workforce tracking.[21][11]

• Deploy digital platforms and dashboards to support healthcare-associated infection and IPC data collection, reporting, analysis, dissemination, self-assessment and integration with provincial and national District Health Information System 2 platforms.[10][12]

• Conduct regular facility self-assessments, supportive supervision, audit and feedback for hand hygiene, environmental cleaning and healthcare-associated infection prevention, with quality-improvement planning and recognition for good performance.[12][22]

• Monitor implementation through training, staffing, guidance-dissemination, budget-allocation, surveillance, laboratory, infrastructure, waste-management, occupational-safety and emergency-preparedness records.[20][9][18][23]

• Manage staffing, workload, bed occupancy and patient spacing, and require healthcare facilities to maintain emergency preparedness and response plans, including drills and simulations.[19][23]

• Coordinate joint planning, shared surveillance, information exchange, capacity building and response arrangements with agriculture, veterinary, environmental and other One Health stakeholders.[19][23]

Monitoring & Evaluation

The plan establishes monitoring, surveillance, evaluation and accountability as core functions of infection prevention and control (IPC), with emphasis on healthcare-associated infection (HAI) detection, standardised data systems, audit and feedback, supportive supervision, and use of findings for quality improvement across national, provincial and facility levels.[14][7][10][12]It responds to recognised weaknesses in Pakistan’s IPC monitoring and HAI surveillance, including underreporting, limited standardisation, weak data quality and an absence of a structured monitoring and evaluation system.[1][24]

• Establish and operationalise a standardised national HAI surveillance and response system to collect structured data, detect trends and outbreaks, enable timely intervention, inform policy and support health security.[7][9]
• Integrate HAI surveillance and digital information systems with antimicrobial resistance, fungal, laboratory and Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response systems, supported by laboratory confirmation, data analysis, dissemination and feedback.[10][21]
• Develop an IPC monitoring and evaluation framework, key performance indicators, assessment and reporting tools, standardised data-collection instruments and a digital dashboard linked with provincial and national District Health Information System 2 platforms.[12][22]
• Conduct routine monitoring, audit and feedback on hand hygiene, environmental cleaning, HAI prevention and other multimodal IPC practices, using facility reports, self-assessments, supervision and quality-improvement plans.[12][13][22]
• Strengthen facility IPC teams and focal persons to collect, report, analyse and disseminate data, provide feedback, undertake supportive supervision and participate in hierarchical performance-review meetings.[12][22]
• Verify implementation through documentary evidence, including policies, formal notifications, meeting minutes, training and certification records, staffing records, budget and resource-allocation records, surveillance reports, dashboards, laboratory quality-assurance records, action reports and facility inspection evidence.[20][8][9][21]
• Use annual IPC programme reviews, workplans and improvement plans at all levels as mechanisms for continuous monitoring and remedial action.[7][8]
• Recognise healthcare professionals, wards, units and facilities demonstrating good IPC performance through awards or other reward mechanisms.[12][22]
• Track infrastructure, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, waste management and occupational safety through standards-compliance records, supply and equipment documentation, incident reports, workplace risk assessments and vaccine-stock data.[15][16][18]

Baseline Joint External Evaluation 2023 scores indicate low IPC capacity: 2 out of 5 for IPC programmes, 1 out of 5 for HAI surveillance and 1 out of 5 for safe healthcare-facility environments.[14]Several implementation milestones are time-bound, including tertiary-level IPC arrangements in 2025, primary- and secondary-level focal-person arrangements in 2026, development of the monitoring framework and indicators during 2025-2026, and broader dashboard, surveillance and institutionalisation activities through 2030.[20][22]The supplied material does not provide a consolidated indicator matrix, numerical performance targets, reporting frequency, independent evaluation process or a single named body with final accountability for all plan results.[6][19][20]

Costing & Financing

The plan presents sustainable and predictable financing as essential to institutionalising IPC, maintaining trained personnel, infrastructure, supplies, surveillance and routine service delivery.[14][6][7]However, the supplied extracts provide no total costed plan, activity-level budget, quantified funding gap, expenditure framework or economic assumptions for implementation during 2025-2030.[14][24][8][4]

• Embed IPC in regular health-sector and healthcare-facility budgets, with dedicated resources for comprehensive IPC programmes.[14][7]
• Develop PC-1 proposals and advocate for dedicated IPC budget lines in annual healthcare-facility budgets.[7][8]
• Monitor financing through records of IPC budget allocations, approved PC-1 proposals, annual IPC budget estimates and expenditure-related documentation, including support for information, education and communication materials.[8]
• Address identified constraints, including the absence of a dedicated sustainable government IPC fund, public-sector budget limitations, financial constraints and competing health priorities.[24]
• Mobilise support from development partners, including technical assistance, financial resources and capacity-building contributions alongside government investment.[5][6][4]

Plan production received financial support from the Global Fund through Pakistan’s Common Management Unit for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria under the C19RM project.[5][25]The Fleming Fund contributed technical resources, including two full-time consultants to the National Institute of Health IPC team, and supported drafting, final review and a consultative workshop.[5][25]References to resource allocation also cover essential IPC infrastructure, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene systems, equipment, personal protective equipment, sterilisation and waste-management inputs, but no monetary allocations are specified.[2][15][16]