Wed Oct 26, 2011 2:19PM GMT
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Geediyo Mohamed Abdi, a displaced Somali mother, sits next to her sick children in Banadir hospital in Mogadishu on August 14, 2011. (file photo)
Cholera has claimed 119 more lives in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, where cases of waterborne diseases have increased due to unhygienic living conditions, Press TV reported.
Doctor Liiban Garaad told Press TV that the victims, most of them women and children, died within the last 24 hours in Mogadishu's southern districts of Hawlwadig and Hodan.
More than 515 people, suffering from cholera and waterborne diseases, were also taken to the hospital in southern Mogadishu to get some medication.
A combination of poor sanitation conditions, scarcity of safe and clean drinking water and overcrowding has led to the spread of waterborne diseases in Mogadishu.
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 Banadir, Bay, Mudug and Lower Shabelle regions of Somalia, and 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 since insecurity hinders efforts in much of the country's south.
Somalia has been without an effective central government since the 1991 overthrow of its former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
MP/JR
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