Contradições da política nacional de plantas medicinais e fitoterápicos (PNPMF) no Brasil

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the National Policy of Medicinal Plants and Phytotherapeutic (NPMPP) considering the growing commercialization of this mechanism of health care. Corresponds to a qualitative research, with documentary and bibliographical research, regarding the private appropriation of the natural resources related to the production of phytotherapeutic medicines. Its objectives were, more specifically, to situate the process of private appropriation of nature by for-profit capital; discover how the traditional knowledge associated (TKA) with medicinal plants and phytotherapics is part of the logic of commodification of nature by the pharmaceutical industry; and to investigate the contradictory aspects between the public regulation of the use of herbal and phytotherapeutic plants and the commercial interests of the pharmaceutical industry. In this sense, it has been identified that the favoring of various forms of destructive private appropriation occurs, both human and natural resources, and that the traditional knowledge associated with medicinal plants of traditional communities is also included in this context of expropriation. It is also seen that public regulation does not favor the access of the users of health services to phytotherapy projects in the SUS because of the insufficiency of their financing, affecting the right to better health conditions through less aggressive and less natural treatments cost.