Video | Doctors set-up cholera centres in Haiti's capital

As hundreds of people are already suspected of having cholera, health officials are upping their preparation in anticipation of a surge of cases in the event thae the cholera outbreak hits the capital city.

Already, many are suffering the disease's symptoms of fever and diarrhoea while lying in hospital beds or inside shacks lining the putrid waste canals of Cite Soleil, Martissant and other slums.

"We expect transmission to be extensive and we have to be prepared for it, there's no question," Dr. Jon K. Andrus, deputy director of the Pan American Health Organization, was reported as saying.

"We have to prepare for a large upsurge in numbers of cases and be prepared with supplies and human resources and everything that goes into a rapid response."

Monday's confirmation that a three-year-old boy from a tent camp near Cite Soleil had contracted cholera before 31 October without leaving the capital, was the forerunning of a dangerous development – that the epidemic’s spread from the countryside to the nation’s primary urban centre was imminent.

Two more similar cases were confirmed at the same hospital where the boy was treated, and aid group physicians also reported seeing to over 200 city residents with severe symptoms at their facilities over the last three days.

Damage to Port-au-Prince's already miserable pre-earthquake sanitation and drinking water systems make the city "ripe for the rapid spread of cholera," Andrus said.

Port-au-Prince is estimated to be home to between 2.5 million and 3 million people, about half of whom have been living in homeless encampments since the Jan. 12 earthquake ravaged the capital.