The Climate-Health Challenge
Climate change is no longer a distant environmental threat in Asia-Pacific—it is a growing health emergency. Rising temperatures, shifting rainfall patterns, and the spread of diseases are placing increasing pressure on vulnerable communities and health systems. Yet financing remains far below what is needed, developing countries require an estimated USD 20 billion annually for health adaptation through 2030, while current global public financing stands at just USD 1.26 billion, with limited private investment in the climate-health nexus.
Catalyzing Innovation: The Lighthouse Fund
To address the financing gap, AVPN, with support from Bayer Foundation, launched The Lighthouse Fund—a philanthropic pooled fund designed to accelerate high-impact climate-health solutions across Asia. In this round, the Lighthouse Fund focused on two key thematic priorities in the Philippines, India, Indonesia, and Singapore:
- Climate-sensitive infectious diseases (CSID)
- Extreme heat and heat stress
Through flexible funding, capacity building, and ecosystem support, the Lighthouse Fund is helping organisations scale high-impact, integrated, system-level solutions.
Localizing Climate-Health Action in Indonesia
In Indonesia, climate change is increasingly linked to tuberculosis (TB), with rising heat, humidity, and poor living conditions accelerating transmission and worsening health outcomes, particularly in dense urban communities.
KUMPUL is addressing this gap through the CARES (Climate Action for Resilient & Empowered Healthcare Staff) programme, translating national climate-health ambitions into practical action by equipping frontline health workers to respond to climate-driven TB risks. The programme will develop a first-of-its-kind “TB and Climate Crisis” training module, and has launched a webinar series reaching over 400 participants and certifying 200+ frontline health workers, and running digital campaigns reaching more than 59,000 people to raise awareness of the climate-TB link. By embedding capacity-building into existing health systems and strengthening alignment with national and city health stakeholders, CARES is integrating climate-responsive healthcare into routine service delivery at scale. CARES will support the development of Local Action Plans and pilot projects led by trained health workers, while expanding access to its integrated TB–Climate training module and contributing to broader policy and knowledge development on climate-responsive healthcare.
Women Leading the Fight Against Extreme Heat in India
Extreme heat is a “silent killer” in India’s informal settlements, where poor housing conditions disproportionately expose women to heat stress.
Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group is tackling this challenge head-on through HeatWise Women, an initiative that combines AI-powered heat mapping with community-led action to identify and support high-risk households. Working with local women trained as “cooling champions,” the programme implements low-cost cooling interventions such as reflective roofing and insulation. Chintan has developed a “People-First” Vulnerability Framework and AI-driven mapping approach with a 68.75% success rate in identifying high-risk households, while also analysing 1,582 heat illness cases to better understand community heat stress and care gaps. By mapping Self-Help Groups and training community enumerators in digital household data collection, the initiative is building a scalable, community-driven model for climate resilience centred on vulnerable populations and women-led adaptation. Chintan will move into community implementation through roof installations, data-logger deployment, baseline health surveys, and expanded cooling champion training to strengthen evidence generation and scale community-led heat resilience interventions.
Redefining Dengue Control in the Philippines
In the Philippines, dengue remains a persistent and evolving threat, with climate variability creating ideal conditions for outbreaks—particularly in high-risk regions like Quezon City.
SORA Technology is bringing a new level of precision to dengue prevention by combining drone technology with AI-enabled Larval Source Management (LSM) to identify and target mosquito breeding sites more efficiently and accurately. Moving from innovation to integration, SORA is working closely with local health authorities and partners to embed drone-based mapping and Wolbachia-based mosquito population replacement into existing dengue control systems, while building local capacity and generating real-world evidence on cost-effectiveness and scalability. By enabling real-time, data-driven decision-making, SORA’s integrated model demonstrates the potential for scalable, precision-led dengue prevention in dense urban settings and is helping shift dengue control from reactive response to proactive prevention. SORA will continue conducting drone flights and collecting imagery to strengthen AI-enabled mosquito habitat mapping and detection, while advancing integrated digital surveillance approaches for dengue control in the Philippines and beyond.
System Level-Change: A Call to Action
The Lighthouse Fund has demonstrated the catalytic value of flexible funding in advancing climate-health innovation across Asia. Beyond supporting programme delivery, it has strengthened ecosystem coordination, unlocked partnerships, and improved organisational capacity, financial resilience, and investment readiness among grantees. By investing in locally driven, evidence-based solutions, the Fund is helping accelerate climate-resilient health systems and strengthen community preparedness for the growing health impacts of climate change.
