VEN (Lilongwe) — First it was killing bald men for the gold inside their heads in Mozambique, then spreading plague in Madagascar by disinterring and dancing with the rotting corpses of deceased relatives, and now — not to be outdone — natives of Malawi are killing anyone suspected of being a vampire, including doctors and nurses with stethoscopes which — terrified Malawians believe — are nefarious devices used to extract blood from helpless victims.

As VEN’s African Correspondent Abraham Van Helsing explains, this latest African ethno-fad is having a devastating effect on Malawi’s budding tourist industry.

“The Hard Rock Cafe, Five Guys, and Starbucks  are now taking a wait-and-see approach, while Club Med abruptly canceled plans to build an incredible 200,000-acre super-resort complex Monday, after  three of their advance men were arrested and then hacked to death with machetes  for ‘behaving like a vampire,’ which is now a capital offense in Malawi.”

Malawi President Peter Mutharika — educated at the University Of London and Yale — insists that while fool-proof vampire identification technology is currently lacking in rural areas of the country and some mistakes have been made, vampires are very real in Malawi.

“If you have seen Blackula or Blade, then you know the extent of the problem we have been dealing with.  Vampires can be anywhere.  And no, garlic and crucifixes are of no use to us here, since our strong, proud, African vampires have developed an immunity  to all repressive, Western, neo-colonial talismans.

“To make matters worse, the Malawian vampires not only live forever, but — unlike their Eastern European counterparts — are impervious to AIDS, Ebola, and many STDs, as well as the rays of the sun — which  makes becoming a vampire so attractive,  especially to our younger men!”

To address what is fast becoming a crippling epidemic, Mr Mutharika is asking the United Nations for 2.1 billion USD to help capture and rehabilitate the nation’s growing vampire population, as well as work with Malawian health officials to develop an anti-vampire vaccine to prevent future outbreaks of what he calls the “African bloodsucking disease” or ABD.

Developing . . . .