[1]: viii With the help of this Japanese grant, a US$8 million facility was constructed within the Ministry of Health's Bureau of Research and Laboratories compound in Alabang, Muntinlupa.

[5][6][full citation needed] The facility, which included an 80-bed hospital with an Intensive Care Unit and operating rooms,[6] was inaugurated on April 23, 1981.

By contrast, the administration's budget allocated the RITM an average of about ₱7 million annually from 1981 to 1985, largely for basic operating expenses and personnel services.

"[8][9] The institute's output was criticised in underground publications during the martial law regime because its research findings were not being released in the Philippines, and were instead only being submitted to JICA to satisfy grant requirements,[6] given that the majority of the patients it served were research patients, while the Philippine health system had an overwhelming need to meet basic health services.

In 1990 the US National Institutes of Health approved a 5-year grant to the RITM for the establishment of a NIH Tropical Medicine Research Center Program in the Philippines, starting in February 1991.

The institute also trains medical and health workers in order to be further educated in their fields in relation to the management of tropical infectious diseases.