India records about ~50 rabies deaths every year.
Now, to be absolutely clear, this is pretty bad! For the sake of comparison, most gora nations have rabies deaths in single digits - sometimes even zero!
But then again, WHO estimates that rabies claims 20k lives in India annually (about 36% of the total number of rabies deaths globally). This statistic is so mainstream that it gets quoted everywhere - in media, in official press briefings and even at Ministry dashboards.
And the WHO has been quoting this figure since the early 2000s - I found UPA era articles mentioning it.
Now, as we all know, the WHO has this weird habit of publishing crap on non gora nations. Remember the excess covid death thingy? But the incumbent fought back with their data, they had their biometric datasets ready and published the exact no of death certificates issued over the covid years - following which this controversy died out.
So why not contest this estimate too? WHO keeps making all sorts of crazy estimates, all these figures are then spread by the gora media and wikipedia wagera. And the next thing you know, the Indian mediawallahs lap it up like the brown coolies they are and the said figures make it to the official press releases.
en.wikipedia.org
