Zaidi orders welfare pay for people with type 1 diabetes up to age 22

BAGHDAD — Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi on Saturday ordered welfare payments for people with type 1 diabetes up to age 22 and free blood sugar testing devices for children with the disease in all governorates, his office said.

Zaidi gave the orders as he received a group of children with diabetes from the Friends of Diabetes Association to mark World Diabetes Day, observed every year on Nov. 14, the prime minister’s media office said in a statement sent to 964media.

The payments are the allowance paid under the Labor Ministry’s social protection program, which gives cash to families assessed as below the poverty line. In August the ministry paid more than 438 billion dinars (about $332 million at the time) to 2,046,000 families. The statement did not say how much the new recipients would receive, whether the usual means test would apply or when payments would start.

Zaidi told the Health Ministry to supply the testing devices and hand them out free to children with the disease across the country. The statement said this would make it easier to monitor the children’s health and would ease the burden on their families.

He also ordered that the families of children with type 1 diabetes who have no home be included in the million-plot housing scheme, known as the Watan Initiative, so they can receive residential land on the same terms as other eligible families.

“The disease that struck you chose you, and you did not choose it,” Zaidi told the children, in remarks released by his office. “Science is developing, and a radical cure for diabetes is expected.”

He said what pained him was the finger-prick tests. “The pricks hurt you, so I want all of you to use a continuous blood glucose monitor,” he said. “I don’t want these pricks to hurt you.”

Zaidi promised to meet the children’s needs at regular meetings with them. “You are all my children, so talk to me as you talk to your fathers,” he said.

“Your requests are orders for me, and I will not back down on any request,” he added. He urged them to live normally with the disease and not to dwell on it, saying that thinking about it would change nothing and would only harm them.

The children put on awareness activities at the meeting, with messages on how to live with diabetes, the statement said. Zaidi called for greater public awareness of the disease.

The Watan Initiative aims to hand out a million free residential plots to families that own no property, in 121 cities across the 15 governorates outside the Kurdistan Region. The prime minister’s office said Sept. 29 that procedures had been completed for 275,000 plots. On Oct. 28, the Construction and Housing Ministry said applications would be taken online but did not say when they would open.