BACKGROUND:: For the patients without HLA sibling matched donor, performing HLA haploidentical haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is confronted with problems such as severe graft versus host disease (GVHD) and high transplantation related mortality. Achieving the similar efficiency as sibling matched HSCT is possible by adopting different transplant methods. OBJECTIVE:: To analyze the effect of HLA haploidentical haematopoietic stem cell transplantation for leukemia and compare with matched sibling HSCT. METHODS:: A total of 45 patients diagnosed as leukemia were divided into two groups. For haploidentical cases, peripheral blood stem cell transplantation with or without combination of bone marrow transplantation was performed. Conditioning regimen included modified busulphan/cyclophosphamide with or without adding antithymocyte globulin. Cyclosporine A, methotrexate and mycophenolate mofetile were used to prevent GVHD. For sibling matched patients, only peripheral blood stem cell transplantation was performed. Conditioning regimen included busulphan/cyclophosphamide. Cyclosporine A and methotrexate were used for GVHD prevention. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:: There was no significant difference in the time of hematopoietic rebuilding between HLA-haploidentical and HLA-matched groups. The accumulative rates of acute GVHD were 73% versus 52% respectively between HLA-haploidentical and HLA-matched group (P > 0.05). The accumulative rate of chronic GVHD was 56% versus 45% (P > 0.05). Transplantation related mortality was 36% versus 17% (P > 0.05). There was no case relapse occurred in HLA-haploidentical group, but two cases relapse occurred in HLA-matched group. The expecting three-years accumulative rate of disease free survival was 61% versus 60% between HLA-haploidentical and HLA-matched groups (P > 0.05). Results indicate that the efficiency is similar between HLA haploidentical and matched sibling haematopoietic stem cell transplantation for leukemia, but moderate to severe acute GVHD occurred higher in HLA haploidentical HSCT than HLA-matched HSCT.