Friday night, members of Pittsburgh high society will gather as they do every year for the "H'Art and Soul of Haiti" gala to benefit Hopital Albert Schweitzer.

But for the hospital, located in Deschapelles, Haiti, and founded and run by Pittsburghers, this certainly has not been just another year.

Since the January earthquake that devastated the country, the hospital has been transformed from a regional health center to one of half a dozen large non-governmental national hospitals that now form the backbone of Haiti's health system.

"The whole infrastructure has gone," said Ian Rawson, managing director of Hopital Albert Schweitzer, operated by a Point Breeze-based foundation. "What's left is institutions such as ours."

Dr. Rawson's mother and stepfather, Larimer and Gwen Grant Mellon, founded the hospital in 1956 in Haiti's Artibonite Valley. They were inspired by a 1947 Life Magazine article about Albert Schweitzer, who was running a hospital in Gabon, West Africa.

In the days after the earthquake, the 80-bed Hopital Albert Schweitzer was swamped with injured people fleeing the capital of Port-au-Prince and desperately seeking medical treatment.

"Over 1,000 people came in the days after the earthquake," said Dr. Rawson. "Yes, we were three hours away [from the capital], but there were no other options."

Since the earthquake, the hospital has undergone major changes. It now hosts a prosthetic center, treating 500 of the estimated 3,000 people who lost limbs in the earthquake. It also greatly ramped up its surgical operations, filling in for hospitals destroyed in Port-au-Prince.

The population served by the hospital -- about 300,000 in the region -- has swelled by about 15 percent from people who have taken refuge away from Port-au-Prince. Because that population is needier than the population as a whole, the hospital's patient volume has increased about 20 percent, Dr. Rawson said.

Meanwhile, many of the country's educated residents have fled for jobs in French-speaking parts of Europe, Canada and New York, leaving a shortage of health professionals such as physical therapists and nurse anesthetists within Haiti.

To fill those jobs, Dr. Rawson has had to bring in people from other countries.

"Before the earthquake, all of our doctors were Haitian and all of our nurses were Haitian," he said. "Now brain drain is a substantial problem."

Many question marks remain for Haiti, particularly within the health sector. A major report last month from the RAND Institute recommended turning health care in Haiti entirely over to non-governmental organizations rather than trying to rebuild the Ministry of Health.

It's a recommendation that Dr. Rawson hopes will not come to pass. He argues that the Ministry of Health could do good work if it were properly funded. Dr. Rawson would like to see the government eventually coordinate health care, perhaps in the next five to 10 years.

In the meantime, the hospitals run by non-governmental organizations are working together in closer collaboration than before the earthquake, he said.

About half a dozen hospitals participate in a weekly phone call where they keep each other abreast of specialists visiting the hospitals.

Recently, Hopital Albert Schweitzer was able to send a young boy for plastic surgery at another hospital because of a specialist he learned about on the phone call, said Dr. Rawson.

While things aren't exactly calm in Haiti ("Haiti is never stable," said Dr. Rawson, referring to the major flooding last month that affected the hospital), the hospital seems to have settled into a new, post-earthquake normal.

"Life's pretty good in Haiti."

The "H'Art and Soul of Haiti" gala starts at 6 p.m. at the Ellis Armory, Shadyside, and includes a sale and exhibition of Haitian art and a concert by electro-folk duo Dean & Britta at 9 p.m. Gala tickets start at $150 per person; concert tickets can be purchased for $25 in advance or $30 at the door. For more information, go to www.friendsofhas.org.

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