An emergency direct flight left central province Hunan on the Chinese mainland for Kaohsiung in Taiwan Saturday morning, carrying a 76-year-old tourist who was recovering from cerebral hemorrhage.

The Taiwan TransAsia Airways flight, an Airbus 320, left Huanghua Airport in Hunan's provincial capital Changsha at 4:30 AM.

The charter flight is expected to have arrived in Kaohsiung at 6:30 AM, saving two hours compared with a transit flight via Macao or Hong Kong, said Tang Jian, an official in charge of Taiwan affairs at the Hunan provincial government.

The patient, whose name is spelt as Ye Api -- in the way it's pronounced in Mandarin, suffered acute cerebral hemorrhage during a sightseeing tour in Hunan on Nov. 25. A chronic sufferer of asthma and thrombus, he was hospitalized in Hunan until he was outof danger this week.

He was accompanied by his family and three medical staff duringthe flight home, and the plane was equipped with a full range of medical facilities in case of emergency, said Tang.

Tang said this was the fifth emergency direct flight to Taiwan since the first one was launched on Sept. 14.

These five flights have taken at least a dozen Taiwanese patients home in three months.

The increasing number of Taiwanese living and working on the mainland has led to a rise also in emergency flights across the Taiwan Strait.

Between July 2005 and June 2006, the International SOS alone flew 638 patients back to Taiwan on transit flights.

(Xinhua News Agency December 16, 2006)