Popular Pharmacy Program of Brazil: a political analysis of its origin, unfoldings and inflections

ABSTRACT

The article refers to a qualitative research that analyzes the origins, unfoldings, results and challenges of the Brazilian Popular Pharmacy Program, in view of the necessary integrality of pharmaceutical assistance. For the production of the data, documents and semi-structured interviews were used with informants involved with the Brazilian Health Reform movement and the issue of medicines/pharmaceutical assistance, considering the period from 2003 to 2016; news produced between 2013 to 2018, available on electronic sites of institutions understood as actors in the process of implementing pharmaceutical policies. Analysis of the data revealed that, despite the conflicts surrounding the proposal's construction, the program resulted in increased access to essential drugs, reduced mortality and hospitalizations for chronic diseases. For this reason, inflections in the program, such as the closing of the first modality, have resulted in positions of civil society organizations, also motivated by the conjuncture of losses of social rights. Gaps remain regarding the quality of access in its various dimensions of analysis and the promotion of rational use of medicines, from the perspective of the integrality of Pharmaceutical Assistance.

KEYWORD
Public policy; Drug and narcotic control; Pharmaceutical services; Pharmaceutical preparations