E/2004/43 E/C.19/2004/23 exist between health and other priorities of human development, such as education, demographic balance, human rights and economic productivity. 88. Indigenous women in many areas of the world are suffering from the alarming deterioration of health conditions within their communities. Inadequate and limited access to health services, lack of culturally appropriate approaches to health care, lack of outreach clinics in remote areas, deteriorating quality of air, water and land due to unchecked industrial development are just a few of the factors contributing to this downward trend. Other socio-economic factors, such as the alarming number of indigenous women (especially in Asia) being trafficked and sold into prostitution, have led to the rapid spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and other sexually transmitted diseases into indigenous communities, destroying their social fabric. Changes in the traditional social, cultural and political institutions have led to an erosion or loss of practices and culturally appropriate health rules and codes of behaviour which have been instrumental in ensuring gender-sensitive approaches to health. Recommendations to the United Nations system and member States 89. The goals of the Forum in this area are the promotion of cooperation, the exchange of information and the development of partnerships, as well as to improve coordination by facilitating regular contacts and reports. The Forum intends to address and report on this theme on an annual basis. The Forum, reaffirming its recommendations on health made at its first and second reports, in the spirit of the theme of its third session (Indigenous women), recommends that all relevant United Nations entities, especially WHO, UNICEF and UNFPA, as well as regional health organizations and Governments: (a) Fully incorporate the principle that health is a fundamental human right in all health policies and programmes, and foster rights-based approaches to health, including treaty rights, the right to culturally acceptable and appropriate services and indigenous women’s reproductive rights, and stop programmes of forced sterilization and abortion, which can constitute ethnic genocide; (b) Further develop and disseminate information about innovative strategies in health services to indigenous women, informed by indigenous concepts and understanding of health, wellness, healing, illness, disease, sexuality and birthing so as to ensure universal and accessible health-care services for indigenous women and girl children, and make available adequate financial and technical support for comprehensive, community-based, primary health services and health education, incorporating traditional indigenous components; (c) Train and employ qualified indigenous women to design, administer and manage their own health-care programmes; (d) Set up monitoring mechanisms for indigenous communities to report abuses and neglect with the health system to national health authorities, and put in place the legal framework to effectively address these issues; (e) Encourage States to include and accredit traditional, indigenous health practitioners (physicians), including traditional birth attendants (midwives), and integrate them into state health-care systems, and give full recognition to the medicinal knowledge and medicines of these indigenous practitioners; 23