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Cuban officials Tuesday confirmed a cholera outbreak in Havana, with 51 people already being infected in the city.

Cholera is a bacterial infection that can cause severe diarrhea, dehydration and in some cases death.

"Every time there's a confirmed case doctors are going around, giving preventative antibiotics to people in neighborhood," says the BBC's Sarah Rainsford, who is in Havana.

According to a Health Ministry statement published on the front page of the Cuban Communist Party daily Granma, the outbreak was located in the district of Cerro. It was detected on January 6 and has been brought under control, the authorities said. 

"Transmission is in the extinction phase," the Health Ministry said. 

Three cholera deaths and 417 infections were reported in July, in an outbreak of the disease that had started in the eastern province of Granma and that Cuban authorities reported over a month later. 

Cholera, according to the World Health Organization, still infects between 3 million and 5 million people each year, killing between 100,000 and 120,000.

Meanwhile, in nearby Haiti, cholera has killed thousands of people since October 2010.