World Football in Qatar is the podcast taking you behind the scenes with all 32 teams at the World Come.

We're hearing from the players, the fans and people in Qatar, telling the truly global story of the competition.

That's World Football in Qatar from the BBC World Service. Find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Thank you for downloading the More or Less podcast. We're your weekly guide to the numbers and news and in life.

I'm Charlotte McDonald.

A couple of weeks ago were more or less we investigated the financial cost of hosting the World Cup in Qatar.

On this edition we're going to investigate the human cost.

Hi, I keep hearing and seeing this number. On the Guardian Twitter feed revealed 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar as it gears up for World Cup.

And I read online some reports put the death toll of migrant workers who built the eight stadiums along with a new airport,

metro system and associated infrastructure at 6,500. Qatar authorities say 37 died.

Where did the figures 6,500 come from and is there any way to know how accurate it is? What about 37? Is that possible?

That listener, Milla, was far from alone among our loyal listeners in wanting us to look into this. So we put John Bithray on the case.

John, what can you tell us about these figures?

Yes, Charlotte. Let's start with that figure of 6,500 migrant worker deaths, which has been very widely circulated and talked about.

It seems to have come from an article in the Guardian published in February of last year, which carried the headline revealed 6,500 migrant workers have died.

In Qatar, since World Cup awarded. Now to get to that figure, the Guardian asked the governments of five South Asian nations to supply data on the number of workers from their countries who had died in Qatar.

The total from India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka for 2011 to 2020 came to 5,927 deaths.

Add to that figures from Pakistan for a slightly longer period of time, 2010 to 2020 and you get a total of 6,751 deaths.

That's where the rounded down figure of 6,500 in that headline comes from.

So that's where it comes from, but how useful is it?

Well, it's only based on data from citizens of five countries. Other nations like the Philippines and Egypt have also had large numbers of people working in Qatar.

Another problem with the way the numbers in the article are being discussed is that they cover all deaths regardless of how or where they happened.

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