E/2012/27 E/CN.6/2012/16 relations, early pregnancy and early childbearing, as well as the need to improve the referral and access of adolescents to quality, comprehensive, integrated, accessible and youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health-care services, including family planning; 10. Stresses with deep concern that early pregnancy, early childbearing and limited access to quality, comprehensive, integrated and accessible sexual and reproductive health-care services, including in the area of skilled birth attendance, emergency obstetric care and the management of complications arising from abortion, causes high levels of maternal mortality and morbidity, including a high prevalence of obstetric fistula, and furthermore entails complications during pregnancy and childbirth, which often lead to death, particularly for young women and girls; 11. Urges Member States and the international community to strengthen the advocacy, policy and programmatic links between HIV and primary health care, sexual and reproductive health, maternal and child health and overall health systems, including by integrating services and eliminating parallel systems for HIVrelated services and information, where feasible; 12. Welcomes the commitment to working towards the elimination of motherto-child transmission of HIV by 2015 and substantially reducing AIDS-related maternal deaths, and urges Member States to ensure that women and girls of childbearing age have access to HIV prevention services and that pregnant women have access to antenatal care, information, HIV counselling and other HIV-related services, and to increase the availability of and access to effective prevention and treatment for women living with HIV and their infants, and in this regard welcomes the contribution of the Global Plan towards the Elimination of New HIV Infections among Children by 2015 and Keeping Their Mothers Alive; 13. Urges Member States and the United Nations system to take steps to implement the recommendations of the World Health Organization for intermittent preventive treatment for all pregnant women at risk of severe malarial infection in high-prevalence malaria areas in sub-Saharan African countries, and strongly encourages Member States to support efforts to increase the use of insecticidal bednets by all family members, including those most vulnerable to malaria, such as pregnant women; 14. Urges Member States, with the help of the United Nations system and the international community where needed, to strengthen health systems for women and girls in order to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity, through health financing, training and retention of the health workforce, increasing knowledge and awareness regarding securing appropriate prenatal and post-natal care, procuring and distributing medicines, vaccines, commodities and equipment, and improving infrastructure, information systems, service delivery and political will in leadership and governance, bearing in mind a need for gender mainstreaming; 15. Calls upon all stakeholders to consider the relevant findings and recommendations in the thematic study on preventable maternal mortality and morbidity and human rights prepared by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 40 and the subsequent compilation of good and __________________ 40 12-27405 A/HRC/14/39. 19