Supporting efforts to end obstetric fistula A/RES/67/147 approaches to address inequities and reach poor, vulnerable women and girls must be incorporated into all sectors of national budgets; (e) To establish or strengthen, as appropriate, a national task force for fistula, led by the Ministry of Health, to enhance national coordination and improve partner collaboration to end obstetric fistula; (f) To strengthen the capacity of health systems, in particular public health systems, to provide the essential services needed to prevent obstetric fistula and to treat existing cases by increasing national budgets for health, ensuring that adequate funds are allocated to reproductive health, including for obstetric fistula, ensuring access to fistula treatment through increased availability of trained, expert fistula surgeons and permanent, holistic fistula services integrated into strategically selected hospitals, thereby addressing the significant backlog of women and girls awaiting surgical repair of fistula, and encouraging communication among fistula centres to facilitate training, research, advocacy and fundraising and the application of relevant medical standards, including consideration of the use of the World Health Organization manual entitled “Obstetric Fistula: Guiding Principles for Clinical Management and Programme Development”, which provides background information and principles for developing fistula prevention and treatment programmes, as appropriate; (g) To mobilize funding to provide free or adequately subsidized maternal health-care and obstetric fistula repair and treatment services, including by encouraging networking among providers and the sharing of new treatment techniques and protocols to protect women’s and children’s well-being and survival and to prevent the recurrence of subsequent fistulas by making post-surgery follow-up and the tracking of fistula patients a routine and key component of all fistula programmes; access to elective caesarean sections for fistula survivors who become pregnant again should also be ensured to prevent fistula recurrence and to increase the chances of survival of mother and baby in all subsequent pregnancies; (h) To ensure that all women and girls who have undergone fistula treatment, including the forgotten women and girls with incurable or inoperable fistula, have access to holistic social integration services and careful follow-up, including counselling, education, family planning and socioeconomic empowerment through, inter alia, skills development and income-generating activities, so that they can overcome abandonment and social exclusion; linkages with civil society organizations and women’s and girls’ empowerment programmes should be developed to help to achieve this goal; (i) To empower fistula survivors to contribute to community sensitization and mobilization as advocates for fistula elimination, safe motherhood and newborn survival; (j) To educate individual women and men, girls and boys, communities, policymakers and health professionals about how obstetric fistula can be prevented and treated, and increase 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 health, by working with community and religious leaders, traditional birth attendants, women and girls who have suffered from fistula, the media, social workers, civil society, women’s organizations, influential public figures and policymakers, support the training of doctors, midwives, nurses and other health workers in life-saving obstetric care, and include training on 5/6