The Ebola Risks.

The managers at Kenya Airways are in an untenable position. In March, the airline reported a 3.77 billion shillings half-year loss because of the insecurity-driven drop in passenger numbers. Now it must contend with Ebola in West Africa, one of its lucrative African routes. It must fly for as long as it can or the knock-on effects of cancelling flights will guarantee that it comes out of the red farther in the future than planned.

Our problem with this profit-driven scenario is that the risk of an Ebola outbreak in Kenya rises every time passengers from West Africa disembark in Nairobi. South Korea is so concerned about onward transmission from Kenya that its national carrier has suspended flights to and from Kenya. In our own peculiar way, we are dealing with the Ebola threat, even as the World Health Organisation warns that the risks of an outbreak in Kenya are staggeringly great: the Ministry of Health has taken this opportunity to make a play for a half-a-billion shillings; the Cabinet Secretary for Health has "briefed" the President on the crisis; and Parliament seems of a mind to make portentous and ponderous declarations that provide little logical or rational guidance. (I am talking about you, Mr Okoth from Kibra.)

As with drugs traffickers, terrorists, sugar smugglers and foreign workers, we know that if there is an Ebola outbreak in Kenya it will be because someone at our border control points let Patient Zero into the country after trousering a fat stack of green. We may have the best disease surveillance and response system but it is useless if the men and women who are our first line of defence have filthy lucre on their minds than the safety of the people.

If the Ebola outbreak is insufficient to concentrate the minds of policy-makers fighting corruption, then there is no hope we will ever triumph over the civic disease. Uhuru Kenyatta has made several statements caviling against corrupt officers in the public service. He has even spoken out against the ones in his very own Office of the President. Mumo Matemu has promised Big Fish will be prosecuted. Keriako Tobiko has done the same too. Willy Mutunga assures us that his Judiciary will play its role. So too have David Kimaiyo and his National Police Service.

Yet when one looks at the anti-corruption landscape, ones heart sinks sickeningly. When foreign naval vessels interdict a drugs-smuggling dhow in the high seas near Kenya's territorial waters, its officers are so concerned about the integrity of the Kenyan police that they destroy the entire consignment while still at sea. When Kenyan naval vessels interdict such a dhow, there is a massive show of hauling the whole haul to a warehouse "guarded" by armed police while rumours circulate that what is being "guarded" is wheat flour, the drugs having been "repatriated" elsewhere between the dhow and the warehouse.

The Judiciary took in a very large chunk of the national revenue between 2011 and 2013. Recent revelations of the abject working conditions of magistrates should sober everyone up about the appropriateness of granting the Judiciary financial autonomy. Half-completed judiciary projects raise many fundamental questions about the integrity of the judiciary's officers and staff. We will not even try and go into the seriousness of the Matemu Commission's investigations or the DPP's prosecutions of Big Fish; Kamlesh Pattni is a free man, the architects of AngloLeasing and Triton roam free. President Kenyatta's anti-corruption credentials are notable by their heavy rhetoric and light impact.

The institutions that should keep Ebola at bay cannot be trusted. Our national carrier will keep flying to Ebola hotspots because it is financially the only thing it can do to turn a profit. Our border entry points will continue to operate with officers interested in greenbacks than anything else. The Ministry will do what all ministries do: it will seek to fatten its wallet without doing a thing. When - not if - the outbreak happens, I wonder how long it will be before the "investors" flee with their "investments" for the opportunities in Johannesburg or Bloemfontein.