HANOI, Dec 16 (AFP) - Sexual exploitation, malnutrition, inadequate sanitation and HIV transmission are just some of the problems facing children in Vietnam, the United Nations Children's Fund said Monday.

In a briefing to mark its annual flagship publication, The State of the World's Children 2003, UNICEF's regional director for East Asia and the Pacific Mehr Khan said the government needed to pay more attention to the children's plight.

"Vietnam has made tremendous progress over the past decades in improving the well-being of its children," she said. "However, several major challenges still remain."

Khan said the government needed to tackle high malnutrition rates that result in one-third of all Vietnamese children being below the weight and height they should be.

In addition, two out of three minors in rural areas do not have access to adequate sanitation facilities, she said, while one-quarter of all children who enrol in school leave before completing fifth grade (age 10-11).

Anthony Bloomberg, UNICEF representative in Vietnam, also warned of the growing problem of trafficking to China and Cambodia of teenagers, who are often lured by promises of lucrative jobs, to work in the prostitution trade.

"This is a problem that has to be solved sub-regionally," he said. "It is a very complicated issue and is symptomatic of what is happening in the family here."

The two UNICEF officials stressed that HIV/AIDS education among Vietnam's youth needed to be strengthened to contain the global epidemic, which has already infected at least 56,000 across the country.

"In Vietnam, young people constitute a third of the Vietnamese population, however only 60 percent know that consistent condom use can protect them from HIV/AIDS infection," Khan said.

Official figures show that condom sales rose from 3.5 million in 1991 to 92 million in 2000, but aid workers say that remains a drop in the ocean of the country's population of 80 million.

International health experts have long criticised Hanoi for focusing on HIV/AIDS as a "social evils" problem affecting drug addicts and prostitutes, rather than raising awareness about the virus among the wider population.

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