NADRA and the Ministry of National Health Services have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to develop an integrated digital data management system for the Prime Minister’s Hepatitis C Elimination Programme, marking a significant step toward bringing technology-driven oversight and real-time visibility to one of Pakistan’s most critical public health initiatives. Federal Minister for IT and Telecommunication Mustafa Kamal, addressing the signing ceremony, said NADRA in collaboration with the Ministry of Health would develop the integrated digital data management system to improve monitoring and service delivery, with the system designed to ensure patient registration, verification, tracking, and real-time data sharing for transparent and effective implementation of the programme.
The significance of the digital system being built through this partnership extends well beyond administrative convenience. Pakistan ranks second globally in Hepatitis C infection rates, with an estimated one in every 20 people infected, and the country’s existing health data infrastructure has historically been fragmented across provincial systems that operate independently of the national ministry, making it nearly impossible to get an accurate real-time picture of screening coverage, treatment uptake, or hotspot identification at a national level. A centralised digital platform that integrates NADRA’s identity verification infrastructure with health programme data would address this structural gap directly, allowing federal and provincial health authorities to coordinate on the basis of verified, real-time patient information rather than paper records or delayed reporting.
Mustafa Kamal described the PM’s Hepatitis C Elimination Programme as a major national initiative aimed at addressing the growing burden of Hepatitis C in Pakistan, and reiterated the government’s commitment to eliminating Hepatitis C by 2030 through timely screening, diagnosis, and treatment. He also announced that the Hepatitis C Elimination Programme would be launched in Islamabad the following week. The pilot phase of the programme is also set to begin in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, extending the digital health infrastructure to regions that have historically been among the hardest to reach with coordinated national health programmes. For NADRA, whose biometric and identity verification systems already underpin multiple government service delivery programmes, the health sector integration represents an expansion of the authority’s role from an identity registry to an active enabler of digital public health infrastructure, a direction that aligns with the government’s broader push to leverage NADRA’s data assets across more domains of public service delivery.
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