Local knowledge and popular practices in the use of medicinal plants in urban areas in the Santa Catarina southern highlands

Abstract

Medicinal plants have been used as the first source of treatment of the diseases by families that are living in distant regions of urban centers. The objective of this work was to study the persistence in the use of medicinal plants in urban spaces in which the public health service is even easily accessible. Forty-six semi-structured interviews were conducted from June to De-cember 2014. Indications for use by the informant consensus factor (ICF) were the highest for mental and behavioral disorders (0.92), followed by diseases of the digestive system (0.88) and diseases of the respiratory system (0.85). The highest level of fidelity (NF) was Malva par-viflora for "infection" (100%), and Melissa officinalis (cidreira), as "calming" (96.77%). The or-dering priority (POR) was 0.72 and 0.77, respectively, for M. parviflora andM. officinalis, which means that the associated knowledge is rather important. It was observed that the use of medicinal plants by families, in urban areas, could fulfill the primary treatment of diseases, even if basic health care is easily accessible.