Philanthropic bodies should help fund R&D on treatment of mosquito-borne diseases: Experts
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In 2024, a record high of more than 13 million dengue cases were reported globally.
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SINGAPORE – As government and private sector funding becomes more unreliable, philanthropic organisations can play a greater role in supporting treatments for diseases such as dengue, experts on a panel discussing how to tackle mosquito-borne diseases have said.
Dengue numbers have surged in recent years. In 2024, a record high of more than 13 million cases were reported globally, according to data from the World Health Organisation (WHO). This is more than double the 6.5 million recorded in 2023.
In Singapore, over 13,600 cases were reported in 2024,
Experts point to changes in climate and temperature, as well as increased urbanisation, as possible reasons for the surge, allowing the mosquitoes to breed more widely as well as enjoy longer lifespans.
As at March, some 1.4 million dengue cases have been reported worldwide in 2025, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.
At the Philanthropy Asia Summit 2025, organised by Temasek Trust’s Philanthropy Asia Alliance and held at the Sands Expo and Convention Centre on May 5, Sir Peter Horby, one of the panellists, said developing vaccines and other therapies is a long game.
He noted that the first dengue vaccine trials were conducted in the 1920s. But the development is now impacted by the US having recently cancelled funding for a number of centres working on antiviral drug discovery programmes.
“So, I’m afraid we are in a worse environment for developing these interventions,” said the director of the Pandemic Sciences Institute at the University of Oxford.
Earlier at the summit, during a dialogue with President Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Gates Foundation chairman Bill Gates pointed to the potential of vaccines in tackling dengue.
He added that his foundation has funded pharmaceutical companies Sanofi and Takeda in their development of dengue vaccines. While developing a dengue vaccine has proven to be quite challenging, he believes it is possible.
“We’re going to need a next-generation vaccine to solve it,” said the Microsoft co-founder.
Investments in science are needed to produce such interventions, which may take several decades to develop, stressed Professor Horby.
He noted that climate change is expected to put more people in South-east Asia at risk of dengue in the coming decades, with the number of those at risk in the Philippines – where there were over 300,000 dengue cases in 2024 – expected to more than double by 2080.
Another panellist, Associate Professor Rose Nani Mudin, from the International Medical School at Malaysia’s Management and Science University, said greater investment in innovation, such as the development of longer-lasting larvicides, is needed to curb the spread of mosquitoes.
Professor Teo Yik Ying, dean of Singapore’s Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, said that while developing innovations to tackle such diseases is essential, it is just as important to guide governments in setting priorities in terms of financing and policymaking.
“It is about the innovation and technology, but at the same time, it is also about making sure that governments know how to set the right priorities, and that means that the blended financing for capacity-building suddenly becomes very important, on top of the innovations,” he said, referring to the mixing of both public and private funding.
Dr Alan Dangour, climate and health director at British charitable foundation Wellcome Trust, said that philanthropic organisations have a mandate and a responsibility to finance medical innovations, as they can take risks that governments and corporations cannot take on.
“It’s a critical moment for us to think about how we can bring philanthropies together,” said Dr Dangour, noting that the Wellcome Trust had established a “coalition of funders” to tackle such mosquito-borne diseases.
Temasek Foundation pandemic preparedness head Lee Fook Kay, who moderated the panel discussion, pointed to how research into a promising dengue antiviral drug – which had shown effectiveness against all four dengue serotypes – has stalled.
This was because pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson, which sponsored the drug’s development, had discontinued a phase two field study evaluating the drug, amid a reassessment of the company’s communicable diseases research and development portfolio.
This is an example of where philanthropic organisations can step in, Dr Lee said.
In October 2024, the WHO launched the Global Strategic Preparedness, Readiness and Response Plan to tackle dengue and other diseases transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes, such as Zika and chikungunya.
