The case in which 152 patients seeking treatment for stomach problems were given a mislabelled diabetes drug at the clinic of private medical practitioner Ronald Li Sai-lai is the worst medical scandal in Hong Kong in living memory. The mix-up triggered low blood-sugar levels in 65 patients, 18 of whom were sent to hospital. Four of them died. The fiasco has exposed the long-standing problems of the way in which private doctors run their clinics. Patients' interests are not necessarily put above other practical considerations. It has also rekindled the call to offer patients the choice of having their medicine dispensed at pharmacies rather than in clinics. The so-called medical assistants responsible for dispensing drugs in most private clinics are far from professional. Most have no formal training, have limited medical knowledge and know little about pharmacy. Worse, they are often overworked. They have to register patients, take their temperatures, process medical records and handle the medicines. It was only a matter of time before things went wrong. Medical science is advancing so rapidly that even doctors have difficulty keeping up. Untrained assistants cannot be expected to be familiar with the many new medicines. In fact, it is grossly unfair to ask them to take on important dispensing duties. The only solution is to let the professionals do the job. The dispensing of drugs is handled by professional pharmacists in all public hospitals. Doctors are responsible for prescriptions, which are then handled by pharmacists. This division of duties also serves as an additional safeguard, as given their expertise, pharmacists can recheck the prescriptions. However, some doctors with vested interests in a private practice are opposed to the idea of delegating the dispensing duties to pharmacists. To ease public pressure, they have put forward some unjustified and impractical counterproposals. It has been suggested, for example, that taxpayers' money be used to train the medical assistants. This amounts to an insult to pharmacists. The proposal presumes that anyone with no relevant tertiary education can easily be trained to handle dispensing duties professionally. There is no reason why the government should subsidise private practitioners to train their employees. It is their own responsibility to hire qualified pharmacists to raise their standards and thus to compete with the public clinics and other private practitioners. The same doctors have objected to the move to make it mandatory for them to be engaged in lifelong education. They are asking their assistants to do something that they themselves are not prepared to do. The Medical Council has pledged to take note of the Health Department's guidelines on dispensing medicines and come up with its own strategy for its members to follow. Doctors will be asked to place the orders for drugs. They are then supposed to check them personally on delivery. They should also double-check the medicine being dispensed before giving it to patients to take home. In fact, these remedies should have been in place a long time ago. Doctors in the public institutions are mostly apathetic about the day-to-day affairs of the Medical Council. As a result, the watchdog has become dominated by private practitioners. That may perhaps explain the ambiguous position of the profession's nominee in the lawmaking assembly. The only proper solution to the unsatisfactory state of affairs is for private practitioners to leave dispensing to pharmacists, like their public-sector counterparts. If the medical profession's representatives and self-regulatory body are not prepared to budge, the government should consider making it compulsory for them to do so. Albert Cheng King-hon is a directly elected legislator