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 that business district was established 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 vaccines and medications used by medical professionals for diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases. The institute also trains medical and health workers in tropical infectious disease management and formulates plans for biological products used by the Department of Health, including the manufacture of biologic products and vaccines.

History

The Research Institute for Tropical Medicine grew out of a 1964 partnership, when the Philippine-Japan Joint Commission on Cholera Research was created under President Diosdado Macapagal. What started as a three-way effort involving Japan, the Philippines, and the World Bank later shifted to a direct bilateral project between Japan and the Philippines. Once that work 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 finally paid off in 1981 with a grant-in-aid deal through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). That Japanese grant funded an $8 million facility built inside the Ministry of Health’s Bureau of Research and Laboratories compound 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 boost both health and medical science. The complex, which included an 80-bed hospital with an ICU and operating rooms, opened on April 23, 1981. During the Marcos years, the institute relied heavily on Japanese funding: JICA contributed about $1 million from 1981 to 1984, plus $3.2 million in equipment in 1985, the same year the experimental animal lab was built. The Philippine government’s budget averaged roughly 7 million pesos annually from 1981 to 1985, mostly covering salaries and basic operations. The institution was first proposed under the name “Philippine Japan Research Institute for Tropical Diseases.”