A Chinese farmer who contracted the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has "fully recovered" from the virus and has been released from hospital, state media reported Wednesday.

The report from the China News Service said the country's 22nd human case of avian influenza afflicted a 37-year-old farmer from the eastern province of Anhui, who fell ill in December.

It had been six months since the previous known case of bird flu infecting a person in China.

The farmer reportedly kept poultry flocks in his backyard. Poultry and migratory birds have been linked to the H5N1 virus.

The Chinese case comes after Indonesia's Health Ministry reported Wednesday that a 14-year-old boy had died from the virus, the country's first bird flu fatality of 2007. The news raised Indonesia's human death toll to 58, the highest in the world.

Another Indonesian, a 37-year-old woman, was admitted to hospital last week for treatment from avian flu after she bought a live chicken at a market then cooked and ate it in late December, hospital officials said.

In Vietnam, the H5N1 virus resurfaced last week in Kien Gian province, after a year-long hiatus, leading to the slaughter of 2,000 ducks in order to contain a possible outbreak.

So far, China has disclosed 14 human deaths from bird flu, having reported its first human case in 2005. The country confirmed last year after new tests that a 24-year-old soldier who died in 2003 also died from the disease.

Millions of birds in China's vast poultry flocks have been destroyed since H5N1 began ravaging Asian poultry farms in late 2003. Experts fear the virus could eventually mutate into a form that is infectious among humans and spark an outbreak.

The World Health Organization says that more than 150 people have died since the disease spread from Asia to Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

With files from the Associated Press