Baby Savers South Africa is taking the government to court over the ban on baby boxes in Gauteng. Are they a harmful tool that makes child abandonment and trafficking easy, or a lifesaver for mothers with nowhere to turn? With about 3 500 babies abandoned unsafely each year, Health Beat looks at whether a maternal support grant could help change that.

Trump’s slash and burn to foreign aid has hit HIV programmes hard. Here’s what this Limpopo clinic has been doing to prepare for such cuts — and what they’ve learned about surviving over the past 20 years.

R6.65-billion — or $350-million. That’s how much South Africa receives in annual funding from the US government’s National Institutes of Health. If the country loses all of its NIH funding, the country could lose 70% of its medical research capacity, Bhekisisa’s data team’s sums reveal.

Instead of the Aids denialism of decades past, it’s US funding cuts that could lead to up to 300 000 more HIV infections in the next four years. Activists like Sisonke Msimang say the past has some answers for the current fight.

The health department is convinced that all US government funding for HIV and TB projects in SA will end by September 30. The department has calculated that it needs R2.82-billion to plug the gap for the rest of the financial year after the Trump administration cut more than half of such support to the country in February. But these funds have yet to be raised, and the stakes are high.

Up to 16% of school-aged children and 4% of adults have attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, show international studies. But in South Africa, the proportion of people with ADHD who use government health facilities is as low as 2% because the public sector doesn’t have enough of the right health workers to diagnose people.