Next flu pandemic could kill 62 million -report

LONDON, Dec 22 (Reuters) Sixty-two million people could die if the world is hit by an influenza pandemic that matches the 1918-1920 outbreak, according a survey published today.

The study calculated that developing countries would bear the brunt of the deaths -- up to 96 per cent.

The threat of an avian influenza epidemic has been causing widespread public concern around the world.

Christopher Murray and colleagues from Harvard University sought to estimate the potential mortality rate from a global pandemic, using death registration data from 27 countries in the 1918-1920 outbreak.

''Our results indicate that, irrespective of the lethality of the virus, the burden of the next influenza pandemic will be overwhelmingly focused in the developing world,'' he concluded in his study printed in The Lancet medical journal.

''Health inequity now is scarcely less now than in 1918 and the medical advances of the past 90 years are unlikely to benefit much of the developing world in any future pandemic,'' he said.

REUTERS MS RK0946