A pharmacy owner was given a jail sentence of one year and six months by a Longgang District court recently for hiring an unlicensed doctor to work at his traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) pharmacy, the Daily Sunshine reported yesterday.

The pharmacy owner, only identified by his surname Wen, hired a man surnamed Huang in November 2004 to work as a doctor at the pharmacy in Buji Subdistrict, even though he was aware that Huang did not possess a license to practice medicine.

A man, who was identified only as Yang, died after Huang prescribed the wrong treatment for his headache Dec. 1, 2006. Huang advised Yang to consume three packets of herbal medicine, which led to Yang's death the next day. An autopsy conducted by a Longgang public hospital showed that Huang's prescription was partly to blame for Yang's death.

Huang was arrested soon afterwards. He was found guilty and sentenced to one year in prison, the news report said.

Wen was also found guilty for Yang's death.

The newspaper quoted the prosecutors as saying that Wen's shop was just a franchise of a large pharmacy company in Shenzhen. He was not licensed to provide medical consultation in his shop.

Editor: Yan