On Thursday, January 30, the National Assembly adopted a bill aimed at combating employment discrimination suffered by people with diabetes.
Firefighter, airplane pilot, SNCF controller, sailor or even air hostess… Here is a – non-exhaustive – list of occupations prohibited for people with diabetes. This regulation, intended to avoid hypoglycemia crises in intervention, is forty years old. It is obsolete according to Agnès Firmin-Le Bodo, deputy Agir (center-right group) of Seine-Maritime. The chosen one is at the origin ofa bill debated and adopted on Thursday 30 January in the Hemicycle.
A case-by-case study
The text provides that “no one may be excluded from a recruitment procedure or from access to an internship or a training period for the sole reason that he suffers from a chronic illness, in particular diabetes”. It was passed unanimously at first reading and must now be examined by the Senate. If at the beginning, the text was limited to people with diabetes, it was extended to all chronic diseases in “concern of fairness”. With this new law, the study on a case-by-case basis will be preferred, “in view of a medical examination or an opinion issued on file”. “The idea is that the occupational doctor must be able to assess, with the doctor following this diabetic person, his ability to exercise or not”, specifies Agnès Firmin-Le Bodo.
“Living quite normally”
The Diabetic Federation, present during the debates, welcomes “a historic step forward which is becoming more concrete every day” on its website. Many diabetics and diabetic associations denounced this discrimination in employment. They defend the possibility, today, of living “like everyone else”. “At the time when the texts were written, it was not the same treatments. We didn’t have the technological developments that allow us today to have continuous blood sugar measurement and insulin pumps, innovations that allow us to live completely normally. There are high-level athletes who are diabetic, people who do ultra-trails”, testifies Magali Fretay on Franceinfo. Ten years ago, this professional firefighter learned that she had type 1 diabetes. Two and a half years later, she resolved to speak to her superiors, who directly forbade her to intervene. on fires.
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