Health authorities and aid workers in Haiti are scrambling to keep a cholera outbreak out of the squalid camps in Port-au-Prince where 1.3 million earthquake survivors live.

The disease has killed 250 people in rural areas and sickened more than 3,000, and five cholera patients have been reported in the Haitian capital so far. But government officials said Sunday that all five appear to have gotten cholera outside Port-au-Prince. They say they can keep the deadly bacterial disease from spreading by limiting patients' movement and disposing of bodies carefully.

Hundreds of thousands of people could be sickened if cholera reaches the camps. Aid groups are providing soap and water purification tablets and educating people about the importance of washing their hands.