Chinese officials are stepping up efforts to prevent a flu outbreak and to control the illness from spreading if it does. As part of an across country campaign, health authorities are drafting an emergency plan aimed at better coping with any future crisis, CCTV reported Saturday.

In recent months, China's Health Ministry has held a series of meetings to discuss drafting a nationwide flu outbreak emergency plan.

This move comes as medical experts around the world warn that a flu pandemic is coming, and that it's a question of when, not if.

Chinese health officials say their plan will cover two areas - prevention and control.

They say the government will press ahead with its efforts to reform the country's basic healthcare system, which exposed fatal flaws during the SARS epidemic early last year.

Worldwide, there have been four flu pandemics in the past 100 years, the first in 1918, and the last in 1977.

The pandemic of 1918, known as the Spanish flu, killed somewhere between 20 and 40 million people, more than the number that died during World War One.

For now, there's no way to predict when the next one will appear, but experts agree on one thing: the time to take action is now.

(CCTV.com)