It started with a prescription no one could read

High in Morocco’s Middle Atlas Mountains, we met a shepherd named Said. He had walked a long way to a pharmacy, come home with medicine for his family, and then hit a wall that had nothing to do with the medicine itself: no one in his home could read the prescription.

The instructions were printed in a language and a script that were of no use to him. How many pills. How often. With food or without. Which one was for whom. The information that decided whether the medicine helped or harmed was right there in his hands — and completely out of reach.

It was a quiet, ordinary problem. And it was everywhere. Said was not an exception; he was one of hundreds of millions of people for whom a prescription is a barrier rather than a set of instructions — because they can’t read, because they’re far from home, or because health information was never written for them.

We couldn’t stop thinking about it. If the knowledge already exists, verified and accurate, why should being unable to read a leaflet ever put someone at risk? That question became UNO.