General News
18 October, 2025
Call the Doctor: Lessons from African villages
A powerful reminder from this week’s column with Dr Felix Ritson: connection isn’t just emotional, it’s medical.
I've had the immense privilege of visiting Africa multiple times.
Having ridden a push bike 2000 kms from South Africa to Angola and spending over six months as a medical student in remote hospitals in Zambia; I’ve witnessed village life.
Many components of the ways in which these villages function are similar to how all humans used to live.
There were almost no fences or walls, even doors being uncommon.
Dwellings are positioned close to each other, immediate family within 10 meters, with spaces of perhaps 50 meters between other family cells.
I am often warmly reminded of these villages when I'm camping at Dyurrite/Mt Arapiles with its shared degree of proximity and lack of dividing walls between tents.
Some of the villages I visited had no roads, with access being by canoe and ox-cart.
In these places, the people that live there know each other very well.
Seeing a stranger would likely be an uncommon experience.
This said, people did not seem bored.
They intermingled immensely, talking under trees whilst children laughed and the youth played games.
The elderly were respected, the young were well behaved.
There seemed between people a profoundly deep interconnection.
So much so, it made me feel as though I had missed out on some mysterious, incredibly important, and special part of being human, without ever knowing that I had been missing it.
This is how humans have spent almost all of our existence, it is our natural state.
Whilst the world around us has changed immensely over the past several thousand years, our brains have not.
Lack of socialising is one of the major risk factors for developing dementia. Being socially isolated confers the same risk of cardiovascular disease as smoking 15 cigarettes per day.
In 2023 the United States Public Health Service stated there is an Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.
Just like going to the gym, socialising gets easier the more you do it. It is often a daunting prospect, and almost always feels not as bad as it seemed once you've started.
If you've been out of action for a while, it can be tricky at first, awkward, intimidating and tiring.
But stick with it and soon you’ll be laughing and looking forward to the next time.
This all said however, there is the occasional person that might not need to socialise very much in order to feel connected.
I’ve had conversations with people with high functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder and neurodivergence that complain that people often nag them to “be more social” when they feel perfectly connected and supported with a small network of friends and family.
More commonly however, I talk to people that have tumbled through life; into a set of circumstances where they are socially isolated in a way that is unhealthy.
Some are profoundly aware of this and the suffering it brings them.
Some people convince themselves they don't need close relationships, effectively putting their head in the sand and resigning themselves to an isolated life.
Some find it difficult to try new ways of connecting, becoming lonely after the social opportunities open to them when they were younger, no longer become available.
I am commonly suggesting, if not imploring patients to walk the ParkRun on Saturday morning, play table tennis, join a book club, learn cards or, the holy grail of socialising: volunteer.
Communities survive on volunteering, and there are a huge number and range of places, groups and programs that need volunteers.