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 available to provide debt relief during a public-health catastrophe.

The international community adapted, however, with unusual speed. In November 2014, the US treasury secretary at the time, Jack Lew, called on the IMF to cancel approximately $100 million in debt owed by the three Ebola-stricken countries, and Christine Lagarde, then the managing director of the IMF, proposed to G20 heads of state an additional financing package.

Within three months, the trust fund was transformed. A public-health aspect 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 that allowed the poorest countries to redirect fiscal resources from debt repayment to protecting lives.

The global fiscal strain of the COVID-19 pandemic nearly exhausted the........

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