Background: Sri Lanka is a country which maintains a satisfactory level of health indicators compared to the South Asian region. The Ministry of Health provides more than 80% of the health service to the Sri Lankan population. Evidence-based medicine is included in the medical curriculum and very few Cochrane authors are available in Sri Lanka. Further improving health indicators can be facilitated by maximum translating of evidence into practice.

Objectives: To examine translating the Cochrane evidence into practice in the Ministry of Health, Sri Lanka.

Methods: Policy makers, clinicians, Public Health specialists, researchers, paramedical professionals of the Ministry of Health were interviewed by in-depth telephone interviews. Interviews were held according to a pre-structured plan. This covered awareness, availability, accessibility, acceptability and affordability of resources of The Cochrane Collaboration and applicability of Cochrane evidence in practice.

Results: Very few persons were aware about the Cochrane resources, out of all the categories of professionals in the Ministry of Health. None of the paramedical professionals were aware about the Cochrane resources. Out of the aware persons on Cochrane resources, none of them has access to The Cochrane Library through the Ministry of Health. Very few officials use the Cochrane resources through personal CD-ROMs.

Conclusions: Awareness and usage of Cochrane resources are very limited in professionals in the Ministry of Health and facilities for usage of Cochrane resources are not available in the Ministry of Health. This leads to low applicability of Cochrane evidence into practice. Absolutely a solution is needed for the issue of not translating Cochrane evidence into practice due to limited affordability and unavailability of Cochrane resources. More awareness on translating evidence into practice by using Cochrane resources and a subscription for The Cochrane Library would be the best solutions to improve the quality of health care in Sri Lanka.