Ebola is back — and the IMF’s relief fund is empty

Volunteers with the Democratic Republic of Congo Red Cross carry the body of an Ebola victim for transfer to a burial site in Ituri province, DRC, on June 8. | AFP-JIJI

Aug 27, 2026

BOSTON – Almost every major global health emergency has exposed the same flaw in the international financial system. When disaster strikes, the institutions built to support affected countries must scramble to raise money for relief funds.

Twelve years ago, when the Ebola virus was ravaging Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the world discovered that the International Monetary Fund — the global economy’s firefighter — had no instrument to provide debt relief during a public-health catastrophe. The IMF did have a related mechanism for crisis response: the Post-Catastrophe Debt Relief Trust Fund, created in the wake of Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake to provide debt relief to countries struck by natural disasters. But a fast-moving epidemic proved to be a different kind of emergency entirely, and the PCDR Trust had no mandate to respond.

The international community, however, adapted with unusual speed. In November 2014, then-U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew called on the IMF to cancel approximately $100 million in debt owed by the three Ebola-stricken countries, and then-Managing Director Christine Lagarde proposed an additional financing package to the G20 heads of state. Within three months, the PCDR Trust was transformed. A new public-health window was added to its mandate and existing resources were combined with leftover funds from the earlier Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative, resulting in the Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust, a dedicated mechanism allowing the poorest countries to redirect fiscal resources from debt repayment to protecting lives.

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