Sri Lanka Population Explorer
Population, economy & health - district figures from the 2012 Census, national trends live
National Population Over Time
LIVE - World BankLoading live data from the World Bank Open Data API...
Population Map by District
2012 CensusBoundaries: geoBoundaries / OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). Click any district for details.
Select a district
Ethnic composition
Age structure
Kids 0-12 - Adolescents 13-19 - Working-age adults 20-59 - Senior citizens 60+. The census publishes ages in 5-year bands, so the 10-14 band is split 60/40 between Kids and Adolescents as an estimate.
Poverty Rate vs GDP per Capita
LIVE - World BankLoading live data from the World Bank Open Data API...
Deaths by Major Illness, Over Time
WHO estimates, 2000-2019CKDu: Sri Lanka's Unexplained Kidney Disease Epidemic
Cause unresolvedThis is almost certainly what "fertilizer poison in food" refers to. Chronic Kidney Disease of unknown etiology (CKDu) has killed and disabled tens of thousands of farmers, concentrated in the dry-zone agricultural districts - above all Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa (North Central Province), with further clusters in parts of Uva and North Western provinces. Unlike ordinary kidney disease, it isn't explained by diabetes, hypertension or known kidney disease risk factors, and Sri Lanka's Ministry of Health and the WHO still officially describe its cause as unknown. Below are the leading hypotheses researchers have investigated - none has been proven to scientific consensus, and this list should not be read as a confirmed diagnosis of cause.
Sources & methodology
- District population, ethnicity & age structure: Department of Census & Statistics, Sri Lanka - Census of Population and Housing 2012 (most recent full census; a 2024 census is being released in phases and is not yet available at this granularity).
- National population trend: World Bank Open Data, indicator SP.POP.TOTL, fetched live from the World Bank API on each page load.
- Poverty rate vs GDP per capita: World Bank Open Data, indicators NY.GDP.PCAP.CD (GDP per capita, annual) and SI.POV.NAHC (poverty headcount ratio at the national poverty line, from periodic household surveys), fetched live.
- Deaths by illness: WHO Global Health Estimates, indicator SDG_SH_DTH_RNCOM (deaths attributed to non-communicable diseases, by cause), covering 2000-2019. This is embedded as a static snapshot, not fetched live - the WHO Global Health Observatory API does not send the CORS headers needed for a browser to fetch it directly, and WHO only revises these modelled estimates every couple of years in any case.
- CKDu: Sri Lanka Ministry of Health / Presidential Task Force on CKDu reports and peer-reviewed epidemiological studies (cited inline) - this is a static, dated summary, not a live feed; there is no live-updating source for CKDu incidence or cause.
- District boundaries: geoBoundaries (William & Mary geoLab), derived from OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL licence.
- District-level figures are a single dated snapshot (2012) - there is no live-updating source for population by district, ethnicity or age in Sri Lanka. Only indicators badged LIVE update automatically.