The latest bird flu patient was discharged from an unidentified
hospital on Dec. 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 Nov. 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 30, 2007)