Syrian Polio can spread to Europe, Experts Warn

Two doctors from Germany have said that the recent polio outbreak in Syria could reach Europe, potentially undoing years of the global efforts put in to eradicate the disease.

The number of polio cases around the world dropped drastically between 1988 and 2012; about 99 percent from 350 000 cases then, to 223 last year, according to data from the World Health Organization. The reduction in children being affected by the crippling disease is mostly attributed to the combined efforts of several countries.

Martin Eichner, of the University of Tubingen and Stefan Brockmann, of Reutlingen Regional Public Health Office, said that wild-type poliovirus 1 (WPV1)  from Syria could spread to many European countries.

What's worse is that just one in 200 children infected with virus will show the symptoms of the disease, making virus eradication difficult. In fact, poliovirus could silently transmit for a year before an outbreak is even detected, BBC reported.

"The big issue is to assure that we have good surveillance to pick up polio as quickly as possible," Dr. Walt Orenstein of Emory University, told nbcnews.com. "As long as it circulates anywhere, it's a risk everywhere."

European and North American countries will be severely affected with the emergence of the new polio wave. Most of these countries use inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) instead of oral polio vaccine (OPV). The latter is known to causes paralysis in some cases. IPV is safer, but it offers only partial protection against the infection.

The World Health Organization recently recommended that Syrians seeking asylum in neighboring or European countries be checked for their polio-vaccination status.

The article by Eichner and Brockmann is published in the journal The Lancet.