LOS ANGELES: Doctors and aid workers are scrambling to rein in a cholera outbreak in central Haiti that has killed 140 people, while warning that the crisis is likely to get worse in a country where tent camps are still teeming with people displaced by the January earthquake.

''There's no reason to anticipate that this wouldn't spread widely,'' said Joia Mukherjee, chief medical officer for Partners in Health, a US relief organisation that runs three hospitals in the area.

The acute bacterial illness, spread primarily through contaminated drinking water, has struck more than 2000 people throughout the valley along the Artibonite River, with the highest number in the port city of St Marc.