They year began with a devastating earthquake that killed some 250,000 people and leveled Port-au-Prince, and now this: the 1.3 million people who lost their homes in the disaster are bracing for another round of death and misery.

"If this disease were to strike the camps, it would be catastrophic," said Jimmy, 24, surrounded by his jobless friends.

People living in cramped, unsanitary conditions at the Champs de Mars camp near Haiti's crushed national palace also expressed frustration that, once again, authorities were not coming to their rescue.

Amid the shacks with sheet metal roofs and plastic tents and makeshift tarp dwellings, the dread is palpable.

"Cholera, it's the end of time," said tent dweller Mathurin, adding that he has "no hope" for earthquake-ravaged Haiti.

As aid groups and the government rushed to prevent an outbreak in the camps, health officials said Monday that the disease was stabilizing.

They said it has been confined mostly to the rural center of the country along the Artibonite River, a water source for thousands of people but far from slum-choked Port-au-Prince.

If it reaches the city, though, the food and water-borne bacteria could race through the tent cities, where displaced families bathe outside, do laundry and share meals in close quarters.

"We know what to do to protect ourselves, but children are left to their own devices. They don't wash themselves correctly and, look, the toilets are right in front of the tents where we live," said 24-year-old Elvia.

"I'm worried," she added. "I'm scared this disease will come to the camps, because there are no authorities here to take care of this population of abandoned refugees."

Only five people in the capital have been diagnosed with cholera so far and the United Nations said all were recent arrivals from the area affected by the outbreak, and were quickly isolated.

But Daniel Epstein, a spokesman for the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the regional branch of the World Health Organization, told AFP it was "too early" to declare the outbreak over.

At the Champ de Mars camp, neighbors found another sick woman. Until she was discovered, Carline, 28, had shut herself in her tent with her young toddler Carlo, also sick.

"I'm not sick," she insisted, her voice rendered feeble by her ailment and two days without food. But Carline acknowledged she had "severe" vomiting diarrhea, both symptoms of cholera.

Lying on filthy strips of cloth, she could not even get up alone. Three Haitian Red Cross workers lifted her onto a stretcher and rushed her to hospital.

"I am worried but not alarmed by the situation in the camps," said Gabriel Thimothe, director general of the Haitian health ministry, also calling for more clean-up activities in putrid outhouses and other locations filled with feces and mud.

"We must clean more often, give people access to clean potable water."

He spoke of a "large-scale mobilization" to prevent the outbreak from spreading further.

Elsewhere on the Champ de Mars, people crowded around a water truck carrying whatever containers they could find.

"This water is treated and clean to be consumed. We are careful and now we come more often," said a truck driver for the French aid group Action Against Hunger.

Clean water is key for cholera patients, who can die within a matter of hours if they become dehydrated.

But the children who came to fetch the water played barefoot in the mud before plunging their hands in water drums filled with a liquid for drinking and washing dishes.

"We know the principles of hygiene: wash your hands often," they said together, mimicking the gestures. "Do not play in mud," they added before bursting out laughing and giving each other amused looks.

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