LocationsHow DAFPAK Delivered Family Planning Reform Across Pakistan
By Mukhdoom Ali Bodla | Policy Officer, FCDO
Since 2017, the UK's DAFPAK programme has expanded access to family planning across four provinces in Pakistan, reaching 11.3 million users by 2025 and helping prevent millions of unintended pregnancies while averting thousands of maternal deaths.
Pakistan's demographic trajectory is not simply a population statistic; it is a structural force reshaping the country's development prospects. With a population of approximately 255 million, projected to approach 400 million by 2050, the pressures are not hypothetical.1 They are already visible in overcrowded classrooms, overstretched health facilities, and a labour market that must absorb millions of new entrants each year.
Analysis by the Population Council estimates that sustaining current growth rates would require Pakistan to generate 68 million additional jobs, build 150,000 new schools, and deploy at least 200,000 additional community health workers by mid-century.2 The fiscal and institutional demands are immense, and they compound with each passing year.
The human cost is equally stark: more than 40 percent of children under five are stunted, 18 percent are wasted, and 23 percent are underweight;3 infant mortality stands at 62 deaths per 1,000 live births, and an estimated 11,000 women die annually from preventable pregnancy related causes.4
Since 2017, the United Kingdom's Delivering Accelerated Family Planning in Pakistan (DAFPAK) programme has combined clinical access, institutional strengthening, research, advocacy, and behaviour change communication across Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Balochistan. By June 2025, DAFPAK had reached 11.3 million family planning users, contributing to an estimated 5,643 maternal deaths averted, 7.5 million unintended pregnancies prevented, and 2.4 million unsafe abortions avoided.
The programme established over 1,600 low-cost clinics, ensured contraceptive availability at more than 63,748 retail outlets, trained over 18,000 community healthcare workers, and built Pakistan's first Intrauterine Contraceptive Device (IUCD) packaging facility. In partnership with UNFPA’s Global Supplies Partnership Match Fund, DAFPAK, through advocacy and strategic incentives helped increase the Government of Pakistan’s contraceptive procurement budget by over 100 percent.
While these aggregated national results capture the breadth of DAFPAK’s supply-side interventions, including low-cost clinics, improved contraceptive availability in the retail market, and strengthened capacity of community health workers, the examples below demonstrate DAFPAK’s key interventions in provinces.
In Punjab, the PAIDAR model introduced in March 2025 brought family planning into clinics, private general physicians, and pharmacies across six under-served districts, namely Chakwal, Jhelum, Narowal, Mandi Bahauddin, Kot Addu, and Lodhran. Some 800 family physicians and 446 pharmacy staff were trained, serving over 71,000 family planning clients by March 2026.
In Sindh, when the 2022 monsoon floods displaced millions, DAFPAK pivoted rapidly. Partners conducted 1,909 medical camps, treated 243,727 clients, and served 82,404 family planning clients, alongside distributing thousands of delivery kits, baby kits, and menstrual hygiene kits. Beyond crisis response, 21,660 menstrual health awareness sessions reached 300,152 participants across multiple districts.
In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a landmark decision approved the relocation of over 216 family planning outlets into Health Department facilities, embedding family planning within routine services rather than operating it as a parallel system. DAFPAK also supported evidence generation through 2,140 client exit interviews under the PMA framework.
These supply-side investments were reinforced by national demand generation. The Khairkhwah campaign reached 92 million people, with assets transitioned to government ownership. The Waqfah campaign, launched in 2026, continues to reinforce culturally aligned messaging. Interpersonal outreach through partners such as MSI ensures that national messaging translates into informed, voluntary choice at the community level.
The cumulative picture is one of meaningful progress but also of honest realism. Large, donor-supported programmes can deliver life-changing outcomes at scale, yet they cannot, by themselves, drive system-wide transformation. In a country the size of Pakistan, lasting change must be led locally, with the Government of Pakistan allocating more of its own resources towards realizing change.
As DAFPAK enters its final phase, efforts are shifting towards advocacy for systemic reforms, and for the policy and institutional changes needed to reshape how family planning is financed, governed, and delivered. In parallel, targeted technical support to government at federal and provincial levels is helping build the evidence base, strengthen capacity, and create the conditions for Pakistan to sustain these reforms well beyond any single programme.
DAFPAK has demonstrated what is possible. The next challenge is ensuring that these gains are sustained, scaled, and embedded within Pakistan’s own systems to support healthier families and a more prosperous demographic future.
1. United Nations Population Fund, ‘World Population Dashboard: Pakistan’, United Nations Population Fund, New York. 2026. Available at: https://www.unfpa.org/data/world-population/PK
2. United Nations Population Fund & Population Council Pakistan, Pakistan@2050: Demographic Change, Future Projections, and Development Opportunities, United Nations Population Fund and Population Council Pakistan, Islamabad, 2024.
3. United Nations Children’s Fund, ‘National Nutrition Survey 2018’, United Nations Children’s Fund, Islamabad, 2018. Available at: https://www.unicef.org/pakistan/national-nutrition-survey-2018
4. United Nations Children’s Fund, ‘Pakistan’, UNICEF Data, United Nations Children’s Fund, New York. 2026. Available at: https://data.unicef.org/country/pak