Assembly/AU/ 6 (X)I Page 13 Among others, the participants further commit themselves to an intensive effort to: o Sustain and expand successful efforts to achieve high and equitable coverage of effective and high-impact interventions that save lives and improve the health of mothers and children, and thereby contribute to the fight against poverty; o Integrate efforts to address under-nutrition with broader maternal and child health strategies; o Support initiatives to stop early marriage, early childbirth and harmful practices, to keep adolescent girls in schools and to promote good healthseeking behaviour among them; o Strengthen primary health care, linked to the achievement of measurable results; o Invest in strengthening health systems, including efforts to improve the quality, accessibility, affordability and coverage of essential health services, with a particular focus on priority periods within the continuum of care and strengthening links with interventions addressing HIV/AIDS; o Invest in infrastructure development and human resources in relation to ethical recruitment and training of health workers, particularly skilled attendants, at all levels, assuring a committed and motivated health workforce; o Allocate more resources to research, monitoring and evaluation for maternal, reproductive, newborn and child health, and strengthening use of data to guide implementation; o Address inequities in coverage of care among different geographic, socioeconomic, age and gender groups; o Hold governments, financing institutions and international organizations accountable for making adequate resources available to achieve MDGs 4 and 5, and other health-related MDGs; o Ensure predictable, long-term financing for reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health which reflects countries' priorities and plans. o Finally participants to the Countdown 2015 Conference called upon all leaders to champion reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health to ensure political priority and investment to achieve MDGs 4 on child mortality and MDG 5 on maternal health. We must all play our part and lead the change to improve the lives of women, newborns and children.