Eye Health in Timor Leste
Timor Leste is one of the poorest countries in the world, with 40% of people living on less than USD0.55 a day. Decades of civil unrest in the young nation have led to an acute shortage of health workers, including appropriately trained eye health personnel.
Blindness is an economic and social burden for any developing nation. According to a survey conducted by the Timorese health ministry, there is an estimated 47,000 people in Timor Leste over the age of 40 living with vision impairment.
The most common eye problems in Timor Leste are refractive error, cataract, Vitamin A deficiency and trauma, all of which can cause significant visual impairment or blindness. All of these eye conditions are preventable or treatable.
The Program
The ETEP plays an active role in rebuilding Timor Leste’s health system by performing specialist eye operations and training local doctors and nurses.
The Program commenced in July 2000 in response to a request by the World Health Organisation to re-establish eye health services in East Timor soon after it gained independence from Indonesia.
In the early years, the focus of the Program was on delivering curative eye care services. This included cataract and other ophthalmic surgery as well as the provision of spectacles to people during the conflict.
Over the years, the focus of the Program has changed from service delivery towards making East Timor self-sufficient in eye-care by 2015 and the eradication of preventable blindness by the year 2025.
The Program is focused on expanding its current work in East Timor and is increasingly focused on improving eye care services at a district and sub-district level. It aims to achieve this through a combination of capacity building, service delivery and infrastructure development activities.
V2020
Since February 2008, the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (managing body of the ETEP) has been a member of the Vision 2020 Australia Global Consortium. The Global Consortium is aimed at implementing the Government’s Avoidable Blindness Initiative (ABI) by delivering eye health and vision care programs over the next two years, throughout South East Asia and the Pacific.
An ETEP proposal to expand outreach ophthalmology services to remote parts of East Timor was submitted to the V2020 Global Consortium. The proposal submission was successful and the money will be used towards enhancing current ETEP activities in Timor Leste.
Specifically this will include further equipping of referral hospitals, human resource development including training of a second national ophthalmologist, support of local outreach program as well as vision education/rehabilitation activities in Timor Leste.
