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Social accountability approaches employed by civil society organisations to address maternal mortality and morbidity in Uganda

ABSTRACT Despite ground breaking technological innovations, maternal mortality and morbidity (MMM) remains pervasive, especially in the least developed world. This article maintains that one way of empowering women to demand for an improvement in maternal health is through prioritising social accountability. It is forwarded that the implementation of social accountability mechanisms, substantially contributes to the reduction of preventable MMM in Uganda. Social accountability is a vibrant and dynamic process through which communities as well as civil society use various means to make public officials and other service providers more effective in the execution of their duties and obligations. Social accountability emphasises going beyond capacity building, which is often the focus of most community engagement strategies, to deliberately involving communities in tracking government programmes and adopting remedial mechanisms. The application of these processes helps to address gaps in the health system that lead to maternal deaths as well as morbidities. Using a documentary review approach, the paper identifies social accountability strategies that have been used by Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in Uganda. This is aimed at highlighting how social accountability can be implemented to tackle maternal mortality and morbidity and ultimately improve sexual and reproductive health and rights.