ABSTRACT
Vital registration data are employed to track malaria mortality and crude death rate trends in the eastern half of Punjab province between 1941 and 1947 under the economic exigencies of World War II and the initiation of direct government intervention in foodgrain markets in 1945. The chapter explores the opportunities offered for ‘testing’ the acute hunger thesis of epidemic malaria mortality in the context of World War II-related famine conditions in 1942 Punjab; and inversely, with the abrupt interruption of malaria transmission in Punjab State (India) with the 1950s residual insecticide-based National Malaria Control program.
