Mission of Haitian nursing school stronger in quake's aftermath, Ann Arbor co-founder says

Exactly one month after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake leveled portions of Haiti, a nursing school with Ann Arbor connections has become a makeshift hospital. And its yard is a tent city in a town where up to 90 percent of the buildings were destroyed.

The professional nursing school, Faculty of Nursing Science of the Episcopal University of Haiti, is 20 miles west of Port-au-Prince and 10 miles west of the epicenter of the Jan. 12 quake, in the town of Leogane.

This photo shows the medical Clinic in FSIL courtyard between dormitory buildings.

The school was co-founded in 2005 by retired University of Michigan professor of nursing Ruth Barnard. It's supported by an Ann Arbor-based foundation and the First Presbyterian Church of Ann Arbor.

Following the disaster, some of the school's students stayed on to care for patients who streamed in by the hundreds. Graduates returned to the school to help. Others returned to their families. At least three of the 127 students died in the quake in their homes in Leogane.

The scale of tragedy has made the school's mission clear,Â Barnard said.

"We're really struggling to get the school back," Barnard said. "We're eager to see if we can expand a little bit and be able to get more nurses educated. That's what we see as our goal right now, rather than to be providing the care, to prepare the people."

Completed in 2005, it's the only baccalaureate school of nursing in Haiti, Barnard said. The country has only 11 nurses per 100,000 residents, compared to 770 nurses per 100,000 residents in the United States.Â

With international medical teams on the grounds, dorm rooms being used for surgeries, and a 40-bed makeshift tent hospital in the yard, classes are still on hold. Barnard hopes that will change in a few weeks.

The school survived because it was built on reinforced concrete, Barnard said. While most of the wall surrounding the school collapsed, and a water tower must be replaced, there were only a few cracks in the main buildings that need minor repairs.

Meanwhile, the U-M Student Nurses’ Association will sponsor the third annual Hope for Haiti Charity Ball to raise money for the school on Feb. 20. The ball will be from 8 p.m. to midnight at the Michigan League Ballroom, with tickets available at the Michigan Union Ticket Office and through Ticketmaster.

According to estimates from the United States Agency for International Development, the earthquake killed 212,000 and displaced or affected 3 million more.

Photos courtesy ofÂ Jimmy Hite and the Haiti Nursing Foundation.

Juliana Keeping covers higher education for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at julianakeeping@annarbor.com or 734-623-2528. Follow Juliana Keeping on Twitter