BusinessWorld PHILIPPINE STAR/ MICHAEL VARCAS The health pandemic has necessary global and cooperative dimensions. In April last year, the IMF noted the $8 trillion fiscal actions across the globe with support from massive monetary measures. The Fund itself pursued its own assistance program to member countries. Yet some impoverished countries continue to grapple with the consequences of the health crisis on poverty and social inequality. In hindsight, this international response hardly sufficed because the world remains open to a second or a third wave of infection. Perhaps the early guidance from the Fund missed on something very fundamental to ensure that the pandemic is flattened across the globe within a collaborative framework. Through its Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, the Fund outlined in a four-point plan its strategy in building the road to recovery. The first in the list was the essential containment measures and support for health systems. The second consisted of large, timely, targeted fiscal and financial sector measures to protect people and firms. The third involved reducing stress to the financial system to avoid contagion across borders. The final point reiterated the need for focus on economic recovery by reducing potential economic scarring through prompt policy action.