File photo shows an internally displaced man carrying his son, who is suffering from cholera, into the pediatric ward at the Banadir hospital in Somalia's capital Mogadishu, on August 25, 2011.
Iran's Red Crescent Society (IRCS) has set up a medical clinic in Somalia in line with attempts to help the starving people of the Horn of Africa nation.
The health center was inaugurated on Saturday in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, where cases of waterborne diseases have increased due to unhygienic living conditions, Mehr News Agency reported on Sunday.
A ten-man Iranian medical team will be dispatched to Mogadishu on Monday to provide treatment to thousands of people affected by the drought and the outbreak of endemic diseases there.
A combination of poor sanitation, 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 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.
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