Julio Frenk said only nine industrialised countries had the ability to produce the vaccine needed to fight a pandemic.
"The pandemic has not occurred and that's our biggest advantage...there's no time to waste. And it's an extraordinary situation which requires extraordinary responses," Frenk told Reuters and Reuters Television in an interview late on Monday.
"The idea now that we could actually move and expand the network of countries producing vaccines, I think, is an idea whose time has come because it's clear that with current capabilities, we would never even remotely meet the needs of the entire world," he said.
Frenk was speaking on the sidelines of an international conference to discuss what the world needs to do to fight a human influenza pandemic.