Plan to Take Royal Blood on Trip Reported

The newspaper of Kenya’s ruling party today criticized a British news report saying Prince Charles will bring his own blood supply on a forthcoming trip to Africa.

The front-page Kenya Times story, under the banner headline “Prince Charles Scared of AIDS,” said Britain’s Daily Mail was “overdramatizing the AIDS scare” with an article about the prince.

The Daily Mail, without identifying its sources, reported that Prince Charles will take his own supplies of Type O blood on his tour of Kenya, Malawi and Swaziland later this month. It suggested that the precaution was because of concern that blood supplies in those countries might be tainted with AIDS virus.

A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman declined to comment on the Mail report.

The report seems certain to aggravate a perception among many Kenyans that their country is unfairly viewed by Britons and other Europeans as an acute AIDS danger zone.

Kenyan politicians and tourist industry officials were infuriated last month by reports that the British army had placed the Indian Ocean beach resorts of Mombasa and Malindi off limits to British soldiers training in Kenya because they feared AIDS among prostitutes there.