Intensification of efforts to end obstetric fistula A/RES/71/169 (i) Ensuring that all women and girls who have undergone fistula treatment, including the forgotten women and girls whose conditions are deemed incurable or inoperable, are provided with and have access to comprehensive health -care services, holistic social integration services and careful follow -up, including counselling, education, family planning and socioeconomic empowerment, for as long as needed, through, inter alia, skills development and income -generating activities, so that they can overcome abandonment and social exclusion, and developing linkages with civil society organizations and women’s and girls’ empowerment programmes so as to help to achieve this goal; (j) Empowering fistula survivors to contribute to community se nsitization and mobilization as advocates for fistula elimination, safe motherhood and newborn survival; (k) Educating individual women and men, girls and boys, communities, policymakers and health professionals about how obstetric fistula can be prevente d and treated, and increasing awareness of the needs of pregnant women and girls, as well as of those who have undergone surgical fistula repair, including their right to the highest attainable standard of mental and physical health, including sexual and reproductive health, by working with community and religious leaders, traditional birth attendants and midwives, women and girls who have suffered from fistula, the media, social workers, civil society, women’s organizations, influential public figures and policymakers; (l) Enhancing the participation of men and adolescent boys in the intensification of efforts to end obstetric fistula and further strengthening their involvement as partners, including in the global Campaign to End Fistula; (m) Strengthening awareness-raising and advocacy, including through the media, to effectively reach families and communities with key messages on fistula prevention and treatment and social reintegration; (n) Strengthening research, monitoring and evaluation systems, including by developing a community- and facility-based mechanism for the systematic notification of obstetric fistula cases and maternal and newborn deaths to ministries of health, and their recording in a national register, and by acknowledging obstetric fistula as a nationally notifiable condition, triggering immediate reporting, tracking and follow-up for the purpose of guiding the development and implementation of maternal health programmes and ending fistula within a generation; (o) Strengthening research, data collection, monitoring and evaluation to guide the planning and implementation of maternal health programmes, including for obstetric fistula, by conducting up-to-date needs assessments on emergency obstetric and newborn care and for fistula and routine reviews of maternal deaths and near-miss cases as part of a national maternal death surveillance and response system, integrated within national health information systems; (p) Improving data collection, pre- and post-surgery, to measure progress in addressing needs for surgical treatment and the quality of surgery, rehabilitation and socioeconomic reintegration services, including post-surgery prospects for successful subsequent pregnancies, live births and severe health-related complications, so as to address the challenges of improving maternal health; (q) Providing essential health-care services, equipment and supplies, education, skills training and income-generating projects and support to women and girls so that they can break out of the cycle of poverty; 7/8