The latest bird flu patient was discharged from an unidentified hospital on December 26 in the eastern province of Jiangsu, local health authorities said.

After being treated for about 20 days, the patient, surnamed Lu, 52, had recovered sufficiently to leave under the care of family members, the Jiangsu Provincial Health Department said.

Lu, father of a young man who died from the H5N1 strain of bird flu in the same city, developed a fever days after his son's death was confirmed as having been from bird flu.

Medical experts immediately sent the elder man to a designated hospital for treatment. Lu's son died on November 2, a couple of days after being diagnosed with "lower left lobe pneumonia" in Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu.

He was the 17th Chinese to die of avian flu since 2003. He was said to have had no contact with dead poultry and the Jiangsu Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Bureau said no bird flu epidemic had been discovered in the province.

China's health authorities previously said that no human-to-human transmission had been confirmed in the two human cases of bird flu and the means of transmission in these cases, involving the two family members in the Nanjing area, remained unknown.

(Xinhua News Agency December 31, 2007)