AFP - An eight-year-old girl in southwestern China who was diagnosed with bird flu just over a month ago has been released from hospital, state media said.

Sun Yue, who was hospitalized on April 23 in Sichuan province, becoming China´s 18th recorded human case of the H5N1 virus, has made a full recovery, Xinhua news agency quoted a doctor who had treated her as saying Friday.

"She´s had normal temperature for more than a week and all her symptoms have gone," Xinhua quoted Jiang Yuanming, a doctor at the Suining People´s Hospital, as saying.

Sun´s recovery is a relatively rare victory for Chinese medical officials, with bird flu killing 12 people in China out of the 18 infected, a higher mortality rate than generally seen elsewhere.

In other parts of the world, about 50 percent of bird flu patients have survived.

According to the Ministry of Health, Sun came down with bird flu symptoms on April 16 after having close contact with poultry owned by her family.

At least 34 outbreaks of the bird flu in farmed-raised poultry have been reported in China since October last year, with the last reported outbreak among farm animals in February.

A series of small-scale outbreaks among wild birds have been reported in northwest China have been reported in recent weeks.