La Moskitia is an area split between Honduras and Nicaragua and is home of the Miskitos indigenous minority. In the Honduran Moskitia, 75% of the population live below the poverty line. Women and children are the main victims of the sanitary emergency: 77 out of 1000 children die because of diarrhea, malaria, tuberculosis and malnutrition. This rate of infant mortality is comparable to that of African countries like Uganda.
There is a total lack of infrastructures, medicines and medical assistance. The only hospital is in Puerto Lempira, the capital of the Gracias a Dios department. The Miskitos live in small rural communities far away from the hospital and most of these communities do not have a “Centro de Salud”. Only the luckiest families can rely on small 15-horses-offboard boats but even so it can take many hours to reach the hospital. Impossibility to face emergencies and the lack of disease prevention and monitoring on pregnant women are among the main causes of maternal-infantile deaths.
IMAGINE Onlus gave me in august 2008 the chance to go there to document the harsh living conditions of these people. With no project going on in the region, IMAGINE confided in photography as a mean to narrate the living conditions of the Miskitos and decided to publish a book in order to raise funds for their project in the Honduran Moskitia: a medical boat fully equipped to face emergency needs of pregnant women and to be able as well to enforce health prevention and monitoring among women and children living in the region.
