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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.

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.

As climate change intensifies, a toxic legacy grows more dangerous in Soweto. Residents living beside an old mine dump face health problems as more floods and heatwaves worsen the dangers of mining pollution.

On the outskirts of Hillbrow, Johannesburg, Fight with Insight has become more than just a boxing gym. It teaches children how to deal with emotional pain and prevent self-harm through exercise, discipline and respect.

Chaos and devastation. That’s the position SA USAID-funded projects find themselves in after the Trump administration closed them down overnight on February 26. Will the US government now kill its HIV fund too?

A month into the foreign aid crisis that the Trump administration’s funding cuts have resulted in, the big question in the HIV world is: what will happen to the US government’s Aids fund, Pepfar? In this podcast, Mia Malan asks former Pepfar head of staff, Jirair Ratevosian, what the future holds, and what will happen if the US government stops its contributions to the Global Fund for HIV, TB and Malaria.

The promotion of e-cigarettes has led to a rise in vaping. Bhekisisa’s three-part narrative podcast looks at how vaping has evolved in South Africa and finds out if it’s a useful innovation in a world where regular cigarettes are becoming unacceptable. Or is it simply another method of delivering nicotine to a lucrative new and younger market?

Several HIV treatment clinics in Cape Town, Johannesburg and the Eastern Cape, funded by the US government, temporarily closed down this week after receiving stop-work orders from the new Trump administration. Waivers have since been announced for projects handing out lifesaving medicines, but everyone’s confused as to whether their projects qualify.

It’s a shocking reality: most children in our country feel they need mental health support — that’s according to Unicef. Health Beat finds that depression and anxiety, especially in teens, are playing out in complex ways like self-harm.

To many, especially young people, vapes look good, feel good and taste good. But are they any less harmful than conventional cigarettes? A Bhekisisa podcast explores the world of vaping.

At first, vaping seemed like a useful innovation in a world where cigarettes are becoming unacceptable. But is it a safer alternative? Bhekisisa’s podcast “Vape Universe” explores — and enters the world of those who are hooked.

With vapes being punted as an alternative to smoking, Bhekisisa’s three-part podcast looks at how the new trend shapes South Africans’ nicotine habits and how hard it is to give up, despite claims that e-cigarettes can help you ditch conventional smokes.

With a daily dose of medically supervised methadone, some drug dependents in the City of Tshwane are giving up their needles and heroin. Although the health department will launch pilot programmes at two clinics this year, most public clinics don’t offer methadone, and private medical aids won’t cover it. Could expanding this project save lives and cut the cost of healthcare?

In Snake Park, Soweto, Thokozile Mntambo and local volunteers are researching the health impacts of a massive gold mine dump looming over their community. Decades of mining on the Witwatersrand left behind toxic waste that residents say leads to illnesses and birth defects.

On 20 January, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the new US president — for the second time. An international HIV expert says a Trump administration will question South Africa’s decades-long partnership with the US government’s Aids fund, Pepfar.

The Health Beat team visits a community suffering the health effects of living near mine waste and finds out whether our new Climate Change Act will make a difference to those affected by air pollution.