srilanka-epi

Production-grade Python library to live-download and parse Weekly Epidemiological Reports (WER) published by the Epidemiology Unit, Ministry of Health & Indigenous Medicine, Sri Lanka.

Built as part of DengueSense LK — Final Year Development Project, ICBT Campus / Cardiff Metropolitan University (2026).

Features

Installation

pip install srilanka-epi

With OCR fallback (for corrupted-font PDFs):

pip install "srilanka-epi[ocr]"

OCR also requires:

• Tesseract-OCR binary (Windows)
• Poppler (Windows) — for pdf2image

Quick Start

🔴 Live Data — Get the Latest WER

import srilanka_epi

# One-shot: scrape epid.gov.lk, download PDF, parse dengue data
result = srilanka_epi.get_latest_wer()

print(result["metadata"])
# {'vol': 53, 'no': 18, 'week_no': 18, 'year': 2026, 'week_range': '29th April – 5th May 2026'}

print(result["dengue"])
#           rdhs  week_cases  cumulative_cases  week_no  year  vol  wer_no
# 0      Colombo         142              4521       18  2026   53      18
# 1      Gampaha          89              3102       18  2026   53      18
# ...

🔴 Live Data — Get a Specific Issue

result = srilanka_epi.get_wer(volume=53, number=17)
df = result["dengue"]
print(df.head())

🔴 Live Data — Full-Year Time Series

# Download all 2026 issues and build a time series
df = srilanka_epi.get_dengue_timeseries(volume=53)

# Province breakdown
df = srilanka_epi.add_province(df)
print(df.groupby("province")["week_cases"].sum().sort_values(ascending=False))

# Export
df.to_csv("dengue_2026.csv", index=False)

📋 List All Available Issues

issues = srilanka_epi.list_available_wers()
for (vol, no), url in issues.items():
    print(f"Vol {vol} No {no:02d}: {url}")

Parsing a Local PDF

from srilanka_epi import parse_wer_pdf

# From file path
result = parse_wer_pdf("WER_Vol53_No18.pdf")

# From bytes
with open("WER.pdf", "rb") as f:
    result = parse_wer_pdf(f.read(), volume=53, number=18)

print(result["metadata"])  # {'vol': 53, 'no': 18, 'week_no': 18, 'year': 2026, ...}
print(result["dengue"])    # pd.DataFrame

Hybrid Parser (pdfplumber + OCR fallback)

Some WER PDFs have corrupted font encoding. Use extract_dengue_data() for automatic OCR fallback:

from srilanka_epi import extract_dengue_data

result = extract_dengue_data("WER_Vol53_No18.pdf")
print(result["method"])  # "pdfplumber" or "ocr"
print(result["dengue"])

Full API Reference

Live Data Functions

PDF Parsing

Dengue Helpers

Download Utilities

Scraper Primitives

District & Province Constants

import srilanka_epi

# All 26 RDHS districts (+ SRILANKA national total)
print(srilanka_epi.DISTRICTS)

# Province → district mapping
print(srilanka_epi.PROVINCE_MAP)          # {district: province}
print(srilanka_epi.WESTERN_PROVINCE)     # ['Colombo', 'Gampaha', 'Kalutara']
print(srilanka_epi.NORTHERN_PROVINCE)    # ['Jaffna', 'Kilinochchi', 'Mannar', ...]

Logging

The library uses Python's standard logging module. To see debug output:

import logging
logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO)

import srilanka_epi
result = srilanka_epi.get_latest_wer()

Data Source

All data is sourced from the Epidemiology Unit, Ministry of Health & Indigenous Medicine, Sri Lanka.

• Website: https://www.epid.gov.lk
• WER Index: https://www.epid.gov.lk/weekly-epidemiological-report/weekly-epidemiological-report

Please acknowledge the Epidemiology Unit as the primary data source in any publications.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for setup instructions, code style guide, and the PR process.

Citation

@software{weerakoon2026srilankaepi,
  author    = {Weerakoon, R.B.H.G. Chathura Kavindu Bandara},
  title     = {srilanka-epi: Python library for live Sri Lanka Weekly Epidemiological Report data},
  year      = {2026},
  version   = {2.0.0},
  url       = {https://github.com/chathurakavinduweerakoon/srilanka-epi},
  note      = {ICBT Campus / Cardiff Metropolitan University}
}

License

MIT License — see LICENSE for full text.