The polio outbreak could spread across the region. A new report by the British medical journal, the Lancet, says neighboring countries are now at risk. A German scientist says although the threat of a polio outbreak in Europe is not very high, countries in eastern Europe should catch up on their vaccinations.

"Definitely, as long as there are countries worldwide with a polio transmission, there is a threat to our status of being polio-free and there is a threat that the infection, not necessarily the disease, will be introduced to Germany. Currently, we have a rather high vaccination coverage in most countries of central Europe and western Europe so the threat of an introduction is not that high. The only country which has considerably less vaccinations than most of the other western European countries is Austria."(In) "eastern Europe, there are some countries like Bosnia-Herzegovina and Ukraine which have rather low vaccination coverage so they should try to catch up here." said Prof. Martin Eichner, Infection Epidemiology, Tuebingen Univ..