Sacranie’s headshot appeared on the 783.5m2 Piccadilly Lights billboard in central London last week (November 18). 

The campaign saw details of personal stories appear on the billboard about the benefits of antibiotics alongside messages on the threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR).  

Read more: Yasir Sacranie: the pharmacist educator and content creator

He said it was an “absolute honour” to be a part of the campaign and he “never imagined someone in our profession would be featured on the screens” at Piccadilly Circus. 

Sacranie featured on the billboard because of his work in the Fleming Initiative’s CHAIN network, which includes healthcare content creators who share AMR content through their social media channels. 

He runs MicroPharm, an online educational platform that provides study guides, GPhC-style questions, webinars, and mentorship programs to help students in their exams.  

Read more: YouTuber, influencer, and pharmacy student...

MicroPharm has nearly 16,000 YouTube subscribers and over 4.4m video views, while its Instagram and TikTok pages have of over 190,000 followers combined. 

“They realised their impact could be much larger if they worked closely with healthcare content creators,” Sacranie told C+D. 

“They launched it last year and invited us all to the House of Parliament. I spoke about my experiences in antimicrobial resistance.” 

He has worked as a specialist antimicrobial pharmacist at Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust during his career and leads on antibiotics learning at MicroPharm too. 

Read more: Antibiotic Space Invaders: can you beat AMR?

As well as featuring on the billboard, Sacranie was interviewing members of the public at Piccadilly Circus on November 18 to test their knowledge on AMR. 

“I’ve got some cool interviews on the day where people were unaware of the answers to the fairly simple questions. I was asking the public ‘do you think we should give antibiotics for viral infections’, and a lot of people are saying yes.” 

The Fleming Initiative is run by Imperial College London and Imperial College Healthcare NHS trust and aims to address the challenges with AMR through research, public engagement and policy.

Read more: Pharmacy First: Report reveals ‘no change’ to UTI antibiotic resistance

The initiative’s executive chair Professor Lord Ara Darzi said he hopes the campaign will “spark a global movement to keep antibiotics working” as “we cannot take them for granted”. 

“As a cancer surgeon, I have seen first-hand how vital antibiotics are: cancer patients face ten times the risk of sepsis, and without antibiotics, chemotherapy and surgery simply cannot be delivered safely,” he added. 

Read more: MHRA approves UK’s ‘first new’ UTI antibiotic in 30 years

Last year, the Fleming Initiative had a billboard campaign in Time Square, New York as well as an interactive pop-up installation at Paddington Station in London raising awareness of AMR. 

It comes as new national surveillance data released earlier this month found “no change in resistance” to an antibiotic used for urinary tract infections (UTIs) following its introduction to the Pharmacy First service.