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2 Non-Food Items:
Clothing, Bedding and Household Items
Clothing, blankets and bedding materials meet the most personal human needs for shelter from the climate and the maintenance of health, privacy and dignity. Basic goods and supplies are required to enable families to meet personal hygiene needs, prepare and eat food, provide thermal comfort and build, maintain or repair shelters.
Non-food items standard 1: clothing and bedding
The people affected by the disaster have sufficient clothing, blankets and bedding to ensure their dignity, safety and well-being. |
Key indicators (to be read in conjunction with the guidance notes)
Women, girls, men and boys have at least one full set of clothing in the correct size, appropriate to the culture, season and climate. Infants and children up to two years old also have a blanket of a minimum 100cmx70cm (see guidance notes 1-4).
People have access to a combination of blankets, bedding or sleeping mats to provide thermal comfort and to enable separate sleeping arrangements as required (see guidance notes 2-4).
Those individuals most at risk have additional clothing and bedding to meet their needs (see guidance note 5).
Culturally appropriate burial cloth is available when needed.
Guidance notes
1. Changes of clothing: individuals should have access to sufficient changes of clothing to ensure their thermal comfort, dignity and safety. This could entail the provision of more than one set of essential items, particularly underclothes, to enable laundering.
2. Appropriateness: clothing should be appropriate to climatic conditions and cultural practices, separately suitable for men, women, girls and boys, and sized according to age. Bedding materials where possible should reflect cultural practices and be sufficient in quantity to enable separate sleeping arrangements as required amongst the members of individual households.
3. Thermal performance: consideration should be given to the insulating properties of clothing and bedding and the effect of wet or damp climatic conditions on their thermal performance. An appropriate combination of clothing and bedding items should be provided to ensure a satisfactory level of thermal comfort is attained. Provision of insulated sleeping mats to combat heat loss through the ground may be more effective than providing additional blankets.
4. Durability: clothing and bedding provided should be sufficiently durable to accommodate typical wear and likely prolonged usage due to the lack of alternative items.
5. Special needs: additional changes of clothing should be provided where possible to people with incontinence problems, people with HIV/AIDS and associated diarrhoea, pregnant and lactating women, older people, disabled people and others with impaired mobility. Infants and children are more prone to heat loss than adults due to their ratio of body surface area to mass, and may require additional blankets, etc. to maintain appropriate levels of thermal comfort. Given their lack of mobility, older people and the ill or infirm, including individuals with HIV/AIDS, may also require particular attention, such as the provision of mattresses or raised beds.
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