Lucian Freud's portrait of “Big Sue”, an overweight, jolly British civil servant, was bought by a Russian. A book published in 1665 that included an account of the Great Plague in London, together with the list of the names of 68,596 of its victims, was sold in New York.

Neither pictures, books, viruses nor bacteria are controlled by boundaries drawn on a map. No law prevents birds flying along their traditional migratory paths as they scatter type A strains of influenza, including avian flu H5 and H7 subtypes, before reaching British hen runs and village ponds.

The plague book served to emphasise that even in the 17th century pandemics were international problems. The title of the book, London's Dreadful Visitation, gave the message that infections travel, and its cover, decorated by the skull and crossbones, and the book's subtitle, Momento Mori, portrayed how deadly these visitations could be.

According to Bernard Matthews, the Norfolk turkey farmer who has had his own troubles with bird flu, however, the EU's failure to quickly disseminate the information that it has about birds carrying avian flu exacerbates the problem. The delay in distributing data doesn't allow the food industry enough time to take precautions to protect its flocks.

Jeremy Hall, technical director of Bernard Matthews Foods, told the Farmers Club in London recently that statistics collected by the EU about bird migration were gathered in a haphazard way so that data became available only when it was four or five months out of date. Hall said that the EU's service compared unfavourably with the British Trust of Ornithology's approach.

At meetings with the British Trust of Ornithology, Hall had been amazed by its sophistication at mapping migration. Using this data and satellite tracking systems, it can be known precisely when birds start their journey and how they are proceeding.

Hall added that the task of preventing avian flu spreading from wild birds, especially water fowl, to domestic poultry wasn't made any easier by TV chefs boosting the sale of free-range poultry. Free-range turkeys now account for 15 per cent of Christmas turkey sales. Outdoor farming increases the risk of avian flu and the challenge to poultry farmers. The latter could be met more easily if the Government and the poultry industry worked together on a system that gave early warning of migrating birds that could be carrying avian flu.

John Oxford, professor of virology at St Bart's and Royal London hospital, is concerned about avian flu spreading from person to person as well as from bird to person. The first proven case of person-to-person spread has now been recorded in Indonesia, a country that leads in the number of cases of avian flu in human beings. Thirty-seven of the 42 people with the condition last year in Indonesia died.

Oxford's optimism about UK preparedness to confront a possible pandemic is increasing. Although he believes that a world pandemic of avian flu is inevitable, he remains confident that the continuing high death rate in people - worldwide still almost two thirds of all who catch bird flu - will fall once the virus becomes more infectious. Oxford expects that when a mutation causes the virus to spread readily from person to person there is also likely to be a reduction in its virulence and a lower mortality rate. Furthermore, Britain now has greater stockpiles of Tamiflu and Relenza, used to treat avian flu, and the Government has made arrangements with the manufacturers of vaccines for them to be available in the event of an epidemic.

Oxford is chairman of the Hygiene Council. Its research workers recently carried out a survey into the relative levels of cleanliness throughout the world. Good hygiene is an essential part of the defence against flu. The worrying news is that although two thirds of British bathrooms were satisfactorily clean, three quarters of our dishcloths were contaminated by E. coli and one in six kitchens failed basic hygiene tests.

The good news is that more British people use antibacterial soap, such as Dettol, than do those in other countries. Britons, especially women, have cleaner hands than Americans and Australians, and are five times more likely to have washed their hands adequately before meals than are Germans.

If everyone followed Oxford's advice about hand-washing and cleaning kitchen surfaces and sinks, and the Government continued to stockpile medicines and vaccines, there is a good chance that antiquarian book collectors in a few hundred years' time may be deprived of the chance to bid for a 21st-century equivalent of London's Dreadful Visitation.

Every Wednesday at 1pm Dr Stuttaford answers your health questions online. To submit your questions on this week's topic, dementia, go to timesonline.co.uk/health