Hanoi (VNS/VNA) - Providing young people with knowledge about sexual andreproductive health combined with life skills education is a necessary andurgent issue, a top health official has said.

Many Vietnamese youths have limited knowledge of sexual intercourse orpregnancy, Nguyen Duc Vinh, director of the Department of Maternal and ChildHealth, Ministry of Health, said at a recent workshop on sexual andreproductive health for adolescents and youth in Hanoi. The recentnational survey on sexual and reproductive health by the United NationsPopulation Fund (UNFPA) in Vietnam and the Ministry of Health showed 15 percentadolescents and young people have premarital sex before marriage.

This rate doubled compared to 2003 while in 2008 it was 9.5 percent.

Notably,only 17.4 percent of adolescents and young people correctly understand when awoman can become pregnant and only 25.9 percent know how to use a condom duringsexual intercourse.

Everyyear Vietnam has about 1,300 abortions reported among women and girls aged15-19.

Lack of understanding of health issues has caused unwanted pregnancy and unsafeabortion at private health facilities, leading to more risk of infertilityin the future, sexually transmitted diseases and social evils, Vinh said.

To address sexual and reproductive health issues among adolescents and youngpeople, Việt Nam has set a target of reducing the number of unwantedpregnancies among adolescents/young people by two thirds, he added.

On August 28, Acting Minister ofHealth Nguyen Thanh Long issued a decision to promulgate a national actionplan on sexual and reproductive health care for adolescents and young people.

To implement the above plan, the ministry is setting up and will soon issue aproject on sexual and reproductive health care for adolescents and young peoplein 2020-2025.

The project will focus on promoting information, education and communication toraise awareness on reproductive health care and provide friendly healthservices; improving policies and laws to facilitate the implementation of thestrategy.

The project will serve as a basis for provinces and cities to build andallocate resources to deal with sexual and reproductive health issues.

According to the UNFPA, Vietnamese adolescents and youth now have many developmentopportunities but also face challenges such as the impact of the integrationprocess, globalisation, the rapidly changing of socio-economic environment andthe negative aspects of the market economy, significantly affecting theirlifestyles and psychology.

There are nearly 1.2 billion adolescents (10-19 years old) worldwide,accounting for one-sixth of the world's population.

InVietnam, adolescents make up about a quarter of the population./.