About the IPC portal

The WHO Global IPC portal is a public health good developed to support the improvement of infection prevention and control practices in all countries. It will help you with situation analysis, tracking progress and understanding how to make improvements to IPC at the national and facility levels, in accordance with WHO standards and implementation materials.

What is the purpose of the IPC portal?

The portal is an online platform that provides free access to various WHO IPC assessment tools to support IPC programme implementation. It can be used as a one-off assessment or on an ongoing basis to evaluate and track your programme's success against official WHO IPC guidelines.

What resources can be found on the WHO global IPC portal and what is the benefit for me?

The portal will be populated with all WHO IPC assessment tools between 2021 and 2022. A downloadable report of your results will be generated immediately upon completion of the assessment. This report will also give you guidance in areas where there is room for improvement. At certain times, WHO will also carry out specific surveys via the portal, for which you can choose to enrol.

What are the differences between the various assessment tools?

WHO offers a range of validated assessment tools to support your IPC programme implementation, in accordance with the WHO recommendations on IPC. There are tools relevant to both national and facility level IPC programmes.

The tools currently available on the portal are:

IPCAT-MR: This tool assists countries in determining whether they meet the minimum requirements for each IPC core component and signposts to guidance in those cases where the minimum requirements are not met.

About Ipcaf

This framework will enable assessment of the IPC situation in a health care facility and identify strengths and gaps that can inform improvement plans to help the facility to meet international standards and requirements.

To learn more and try out the assessment tools, click here

What is the difference between using an assessment tool and participating in a survey?

Using an assessment tool is an opportunity for you to familiarize yourself with the WHO assessment tool, to carry out an online assessment and, immediately upon completion of the assessment, to receive a tailored report for your current IPC programme, which will summarize the evaluation and provide guidance for implementation.

Users can choose whether the data gathered through the assessment should be stored for access at a later date or not.

On the other hand, a survey is an activity administered by WHO where specific target groups are invited to share data via the portal using a specific assessment tool. By using the assessment tool during a survey, users can benefit from exactly the same portal functions as described above. However, the data are shared with WHO and collected for the purpose of rigorous situational analysis and to inform WHO strategies and plans for supporting IPC improvement. Surveys are carried out during pre-defined time periods to provide a data snapshot for that period.

What happens if I start the assessment but cannot finish it during one sitting?

If you have chosen to agree for WHO to store your (anonymized) data, all assessments can be saved as "partial" until you have gathered all the necessary information to enable you to fully complete the answer to each question. No assessment tool can be submitted unless all the questions have been answered.

If you have chosen not to share your data with WHO, you can continuously enter and review your answers while you keep your browser window open, but if you close it before submission, your data will be lost. And once again, no assessment tool can be submitted unless all questions have been answered.

What happens once I have completed the assessment tool?

Once you have submitted your data, a report of your assessment results will be generated automatically, and will include specific guidance to help you understand how to improve your IPC programme.

What will happen to data I enter while using the tools?

When you begin an assessment, you will be asked if you are willing for your data (anonymized) to be shared by WHO for monitoring and evaluation purposes according to its data sharing policy. If you decline, the data entered on completing an assessment will not be stored.

What happens with the assessment data that I submit?

If you have agreed to share your assessment data with WHO, we will ensure that all the data submitted remain confidential and not shared outside WHO, as per WHO's policy on the use and sharing of data collected by WHO in Member States outside the context of public health emergencies.

Note: Assessment data is the data you enter when answering the questions within any given tool. Demographic data are your name, organization, job title (or role), IPC focal point status, type of facility and email address. This data is kept securely by WHO.