Centos – Installing MySQL-python via yum / missing dependency / incompatibility

I have come up against problems installing MySQL-python via yum.

Our server is running Centos 5.5 and MySQL Version 5.1.45, Python-dev is
installed.

Yum complains about the missing dependency libmysqlclient_r.so.15:

Missing Dependency: libmysqlclient_r.so.15()(64bit) is needed by package
MySQL-python-1.2.1-1.x86_64 (base)

The server is up to date and the packages mysql mysql-devel
python-devel are installed. The missing dependency is nowhere on the system:

# locate libmysqlclient
/usr/lib64/libmysqlclient.so
/usr/lib64/libmysqlclient.so.15
/usr/lib64/libmysqlclient.so.16
/usr/lib64/libmysqlclient.so.16.0.0
/usr/lib64/libmysqlclient_r.so
/usr/lib64/libmysqlclient_r.so.16
/usr/lib64/libmysqlclient_r.so.16.0.0
/usr/lib64/mysql/libmysqlclient.a
/usr/lib64/mysql/libmysqlclient.la
/usr/lib64/mysql/libmysqlclient.so
/usr/lib64/mysql/libmysqlclient_r.a
/usr/lib64/mysql/libmysqlclient_r.la
/usr/lib64/mysql/libmysqlclient_r.so
/usr/local/cpanel/lib64/libmysqlclient.so.14

# rpm -qa | grep -i mysql
MySQL-devel-5.1.45-0.glibc23
MySQL-bench-5.0.89-0.glibc23
MySQL-shared-5.1.45-0.glibc23
MySQL-server-5.1.45-0.glibc23
MySQL-test-5.1.45-0.glibc23
MySQL-client-5.1.45-0.glibc23

The Python version is python-2.4.3-27.el5.x86_64:

Python 2.4.3 (#1, Sep  3 2009, 15:37:37)
[GCC 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-46)] on linux2

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.