HANOI, June 29 (Xinhua) -- Some 12 million Vietnamese people, or 14 percent of Vietnam's population, are infected with hepatitis B, around three million of them need treatment, local newspaper Youth reported Monday.

    Up to 12 percent of the infected people are aged around 10, the newspaper quoted Prof. Pham Hoang Viet, chairman of Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City Liver and Gall Society, as saying. In the country, hepatitis B mainly transmits from infected mothers to babies at the birth, he said.

    According to the World Health Organization, hepatitis B is preventable with safe and effective vaccines that have been available since 1982. In much of the developing world, most people become infected with the hepatitis B virus (HBV) during childhood, and 8-10 percent of people in the general population become chronically infected.

    HBV is transmitted by contact with blood or body fluids of an infected person in the same way as HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. However, HBV is 50 to 100 times more infectious than HIV, said the organization.