In 2006, the National Policy on Integrative and Complementary Practices and the National Policy on Medicinal Plants and Herbal Medicines were created for the Brazilian National Health System (the SUS), as result of a long process of demand and construction of a policy for the sector. This paper aims to analyze the construction of policy for deployment / implementation of phytotherapy in SUS, the facilities and difficulties involved in this process and the challenges and prospects. So we analyzed documents from the Ministry of Health relating to the issue of articles covering politics, as well as articles on aspects of herbal medicine that have significance in relation to its use in health services. From this analysis, it is observed that, although the federal government has developed several initiatives, the implementation of the policy made little progress because of the difficulties for its use in the SUS, as the little knowledge that health professionals have on Phytotherapy, understanding misrepresented on the efficacy and safety of this treatment on the part of users and health professionals, the difficulty of access to medicinal plant and phytotherapics, besides structuring services in ways that favor the use of synthetic medication. However, we see that this policy is important for offering another form of treatment, the fact that medicinal plants are accessible to the population, for rescuing the popular understanding by encouraging popular participation etc. and are facilitating factors for their implementation.
health policy; implementation; Unified Health System; herbal medicine; medicinal plants