THE Mornington Peninsula “Friends of Lospalos” group will this week continue their major ophthalmic cataract outreach surgical clinic in Timor-Leste.
A self-funded team of five will continue the initiative to help with deteriorating eyesight and eye health at the Lospalos Hospital, led by Dr Juvinal Fonseca and his medical staff.
New funding has allowed eye doctors to travel from the Timor-Leste capital of Dili to Lospalos to conduct eye operations for those most in need.
This will be the fourth ophthalmic clinic funded by the Friends of Lospalos program with donations coming from the Mornington Peninsula community, Cr David Gill and the Mornington Peninsula Shire.
Thanks to the Friends of Lospaslos, to date over fifty patients have had cataract and other surgical procedures undertaken by the visiting outreach team from the Dili Eye Hospital, in Lospalos.
President of the Friends of Lospalos program and optometrist Colleen Hammond has led the last three trips to Lospalos and while there helped identify many Timorese in need of eye surgery and treatment.
The current trip will focus on the post eye surgery checkups as well as managing and maintaining the range of other projects the program has overseen.
“This trip will really help us understand how some of the projects have been going,” said Hammond.
“We’re going to meet with the doctors from the Dili Eye Hospital and just ensure there is a conversation around making sure they’re meeting the needs of the communities who don’t have access to the hospital in Dili.”
Hammond will be holding the annual Friends of Lospalos meeting on Sunday 18 October at 2pm at Studio, 5-17 Currawong Street, Mornington.
Last year the Friends of Lospalos program celebrated its 25th anniversary since being established in 2000, and despite the funding from the council being cut in 2025 a community groundswell has plugged the funding loss and ensured they are able to continue their partnership with the people of Lospalos and Timor-Leste.
“The community’s been amazing in terms of funding, particularly when that news was announced that we’ve had that funding cut. We’ve had amazing donors to be able to do continue what we’ve been doing.”
Since the funding changes, the Friends of Lospalos program has had to shift its focus away from infrastructure projects and more towards investing in the community like education and scholarship programs.
The friendship groups were formed following the Timor-Leste’s independence vote in 1999 which saw Indonesian authorities depart and leave destruction their wake.
To help with the ophthalmic program, the Mornington Peninsula Friends of Lospalos program partnered with the Lions Club’s program Recycle for Sight to encourage locals to donate their old glasses to help offer the gift of vision to the people of Timor-Leste.
First published in the Mornington News – 29 September 2026
