An internally displaced Somali woman attends to her cholera-stricken children at a hospital in Mogadishu on August 18, 2011. (File photo)
Cholera has killed 214 more children in central Somalia, where famine and unhygienic living conditions allow the waterborne disease to flourish, Press TV reported.
Medical sources told Press TV that the victims died on Saturday in the town of Beledweyne in Somalia's central region of Hiiran.
He added that at least 1,500 children suffering from cholera have died over the past five days in the Hiiran region.
A combination of poor sanitation coupled with the scarcity of safe and clean drinking water has led to the spread of waterborne diseases in Somalia.
According to the World Health Organization, some 75 percent of all cases of highly infectious diarrhea are among children under the age of five.
Cholera is confirmed in the Banadir, Bay, Mudug and Lower Shabelle regions of Somalia, as the number of acute diarrhea cases has increased dramatically in the last few months.
Reports say that aid agencies can take food supplies to only a limited number of people affected by the disaster, as a lack of security hinders efforts in much of the country's south.
Somalia has effectively been without a central government since the 1991 overthrow of its former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
MP/JG
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