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You are correct, the IMF isn‘t a charity. When the cost is low enough, maybe things can be more charitable, but when the costs gets up there, it is gonna come down to how much the countries funding the IMF care about it. Still better for the country than not being offered loans though.
This was one of the more concerning post-war issues, when the IMF looks at any conflict all they see is a gigantic bag of money. Privatization, making repayment of loans supersede social spending, they'll make sure that if the country isn't a wreck after the war that it'll be one by the time the loan is paid off. >

The IMF has a tough job to do. Unfortunately, it has very little to do with the good of the country to which they are loaning money.
Put in the worst possible terms, the IMF is designed to make sure local economies crash slow enough that they don't take huge sections of the global economy with them. Global economics is currently ruled by a vast network of borrowed and loaned monies between countries.
Think of loans as princesses from medieval europe - they exchanged marriages and interbred in order to solidify friendly relationships, sometimes as equals but also as a form of dominance (You will give my son your daughter in marriage). We do much of the same thing now, except the exchange is in loans rather than women.
At first blush it doesn't seem to make much sense, but it works out mostly fine.
The IMF is there to keep failing countries from taking out those they have economic ties to as well, thus avoiding a cascading failure throughout the world economy.
Very rarely does the IMF's intervention work out well for the country borrowing money. But the IMF has managed to stifle the effects of countries going essentially bankrupt.