Research Institute for Tropical Medicine

Did You Know?

• The RITM is organized into five divisions: Laboratory Research, Clinical Research, Biologicals Manufacturing, Administration, and Finance.
• The RITM was incorporated into Filinvest Corporate City when the latter was established as a business district in 1995.

Institute functions

The RITM is tasked by the Philippine Department of Health and the Philippine Government to supervise, plan, and implement research programs aimed at preventing and controlling prevailing infectious and tropical diseases in the Philippines. This includes research on advancing vaccines and medications used by medical professionals. The institute also trains medical and health workers in the management of tropical infectious diseases. Additionally, it formulates plans and research projects involving biological products used by the Department of Health, including the manufacture of biologic products and vaccines.

History

The Research Institute for Tropical Medicine has its roots in a 1964 initiative during President Diosdado Macapagal’s term, when a Philippine-Japan Joint Commission on Cholera Research was formed. This partnership started as a three-way effort involving Japan, the Philippines, and the World Bank, then shifted to a direct bilateral agreement between Japan and the Philippines. Once that project wrapped up, discussions turned to broadening the collaboration to address tropical diseases in general. By the early 1980s, years of talks between interested parties in both governments led to a key breakthrough in 1981: a grant-in-aid from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). That grant funded an $8 million facility built on the grounds of the Ministry of Health’s Bureau of Research and Laboratories in Alabang, Muntinlupa. With construction already underway, Malacañang issued Executive Order 674 on March 25, 1981, officially allowing the Ministry of Health to set up a research facility focused on basic and applied tropical medicine research, aiming to improve health and advance medical science. The complex, which featured an 80-bed hospital with an ICU and operating rooms, opened on April 23, 1981. During the Marcos administration, RITM relied heavily on Japanese funding: JICA provided about $1 million from 1981 to 1984, and another $3.2 million in equipment in 1985, the year the experimental animal lab was established. In contrast, the Philippine government allocated roughly 7 million pesos annually for basic operations and salaries. The institute was originally proposed under the name “Philippine Japan Research Institute for Tropical Diseases.”