Three brothers who were born in Haiti, reared in Brooklyn and became doctors brought their medical skills and compassion to their quake-ravaged homeland.

Amid the catastrophe, the Ford brothers vowed to help rebuild the nation's health structure.

"The faith that I saw was remarkable ... people saying 'praise the Lord' as their limbs are being amputated," Dr. Billy Ford, 47, said yesterday, his first day back as chief anesthesiologist at St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx.

His brother Jean, 53, is a pulmonologist and associate professor of epidemiology and medicine at Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

Their brother, Henri, 51, chief of surgery at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles, is still in Port-au-Prince.

"I hate to leave," he said. "I've been blessed ... to bring comfort and healing to the people."

Billy Ford arrived in Haiti with Project Medishare Friday. He and Jean treated people at the field hospital at the airport: three large tents with some 200 patients. Each day Billy provided sedation for 25 to 35 amputees and people with gaping wounds who needed dressings changed, a painful ordeal.

Billy Ford heard a woman moan in Creole, "Nou foutu" - "we're done" - when her husband's leg was amputated.

"He was a street vendor and they had nine children," Billy Ford said.

"I told her I'd pray for her."

As Haitian-Americans, the brothers especially felt the pain of the people when the quake hit Jan. 12, and immediately wanted to help.

Jean Ford thought there wouldn't be a need for his specialty, but he helped save the life of a man who had been shot in the chest in a mugging three days before the earthquake and developed fluid in his lungs.

"This is the first time we worked together as doctors," Jean Ford said.

The doctors are three of nine Ford children reared in Crown Heights. Billy went to Brooklyn Tech, Henri and Jean to John Jay High School. Three of their sisters are nurses.

Their father, Guillaume, 92, is a preacher.

"We heal bodies, he's a healer of souls," said Billy Ford.

All three doctors got together in Haiti once, for a meal, and agreed they will return to help rebuild the medical school, or teach new doctors.

When they saw the church their father preached in for 50 years flattened, the siblings asked each other, "Who's gonna tell Dad?"

BY Patrice O'Shaughnessy