Manitoba First Nation finds doctor from Brazil, after painstaking search

A Manitoba First Nation’s international push to recruit a family doctor leads MedicalWatch for March 6, 2025.

A First Nation in southwestern Manitoba has tried for years to recruit a doctor for the community.

Gambler First Nation, which is about 350 kilometres northwest from Winnipeg, has fewer than 100 residents. The First Nation has gone six years without a doctor.

“Right now, we can’t even get a family doctor,” said Chief David LeDoux of Gambler First Nation.

His community relies on clinics nearly 30 minutes away in Russell. Chief LeDoux says it’s been a challenge.

“They just don’t have room for anybody. A lot of my appointments are two to three years down the road.”

LeDoux was desperate for that care when he suffered a heart attack back in 2019.

“It was pretty scary for me to be out here,” he said.

He made it a mission from that point on to recruit help, but it wasn’t easy. The search took him to Cuba, after not being able to find anyone in Canada.

Eventually they reached out to Manitoba’s Immigration Services and found Igor Schinkarew.

“We kept pushing, and finally we met with Igor, and we started talking, and he’s going to fit in long term for us,” said LeDoux.

Schinkarew moved to Manitoba in 2019. He says he practiced family medicine in Brazil for seven years, working mostly in remote and rural communities.

“I wanted a challenge in my life. I know that my English was good enough, and I am a French native speaker, so why not Canada? Why not Manitoba?” Schinkarew said.

He will eventually become the new doctor in Gambler but first has to spend a year as a clinical assistant while he finalizes the last steps for Canadian medical certification.

The new clinic is set to open later this month.

“It means a lot. I feel very honoured, and I feel glad to be the first physician here,” said Schinkarew. “I’m taking on the responsibility to improve the health care here.”

Gambler is a community stricken with diabetes. The future doctor says he is making it his mission to reduce the prevalence of the disease.

“We should really try to improve lifestyle and diet before it can become more severe,” he says. “Food, quality and exercise are the most important thing to address diabetes, so we can start one step at a time, by learning about their food intake habits and from there can expand to exercise.”

Recent data from Doctors Manitoba, released in October 2024, shows the province is around 340 physicians away from hitting the national average of doctors per capita, which sits at 243 per 100,000. Manitoba also sits second last amongst the provinces for doctors per capita and has the lowest rate of family physicians across the country.

For LeDoux, bringing in much-needed help is giving him peace of mind knowing that he and the members of his community will be taken care of moving forward.

“He’s going to be here way longer than I am. It’s good to see that his heart is here. Not too many people seem to fit into the Gambler lifestyle that we have here, but once you get to know the people, it’s pretty nice.”

“It was all a dream. I never thought it would happen. I really didn’t,” he said.