Prática das farmácias vivas do município de Fortaleza, Ceará, e a necessidade de uma ação de extensão sistêmica

Urban Farm DB summary

A multi-case study based on content analysis examined the "Living Pharmacy" (Farmácia Viva, FV) initiative in Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil, characterizing its operating dynamics, social actors, and alignment with the state's medicinal plant policy. The FVs operate in areas marked by poverty and social marginality, handling production, consumption, and distribution of medicinal plants, with 30% also supplying phytotherapeutic demand for Brazil's public health system (SUS); the social actors envisioned by the policy were largely absent except at the FVs run by the Federal University of Ceará (UFC) and the Phytotherapeutics Center, where community members, academics, and patients partially substituted for them, acting simultaneously as producers, processing technicians, and beneficiaries.