The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee is set to approve this week a program to assist some of the approximately 50,000 needy Jewish children that a JDC study has found live in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

The JDC is expected to approve the program at a board of governors meeting in Jerusalem.

Some 46,000 needy Jewish children live in the former Soviet Union, with about 10 percent living in poverty, the study found.

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Only a third of the children live in adequate housing.

The JDC already provides assistance to some 20,000 Jewish children there, and plans to expand its aid program - including food packages, medicine and school assistance ¬ to include several hundred thousand more children.

The JDC found an additional 1,200 children in distress living in Eastern Europe. Of those, 350 are in Hungary, 150 are in Romania and 90 are in Poland.

The children in Romania are particularly vulnerable to the risk of contracting AIDS.

The organization also found some 350,000 at-risk children in Israel, constituting 15 percent of Israeli children.