Objective  To assess human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS)-related stigma among Chinese health care providers (HCPs) and to provide evidences for implementing effective anti-stigma interventions in health care settings.

  Methods  A systematic search was conducted on three databases (China National Knowledge Infrastructure CNKI, Wangfang and PubMed databases) for related literatures published from January 2001 through June 2017. A meta-analysis was performed with R 3.3.1 software.

  Results  Totally 43 studies (40 published in Chinese and 3 in English) were included. Of the 21 335 HCPs involved in the studies, 37.59% (95% confidence interval 95% CI: 22.55% – 53.96%) had negative stereotypes about people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) and 47.02% (95% CI: 34.41% – 59.83%) of the HCPs were afraid of facing PLWHA; 31.43% (95% CI: 18.72% – 45.73%) of the HCPs believed that they have the right to refuse providing medical services to PLWHA and 37.96% (95% CI: 20.64% – 57.01%) would be unwilling to perform invasive procedures to PLWHA; 54.44% (95% CI: 45.05% – 63.67%) and 59.39% (95% CI: 32.13% – 83.85%) of the HCPs agreed to isolate PLWHA in the hospital and to have them tested mandatorily; 37.40% (95% CI: 20.08% – 56.57%) of the HCPs thought they could disclose PLWHA’s condition to others without their consent. Sensitivity analysis revealed that the results of the meta-analysis were stable, and the results of Egger′ test and funnel plot demonstrated no significant publication bias for the indicators studied, except for being unwilling to perform invasive procedures to PLWHA.

  Conclusion  Stigma towards PLWHA is serious among HCPs in China and interventions for reducing the stigma should be conducted among the HCPs.