Dr Fiona Wood is an immigrant who has lived 20-plus years in Australia and calls it her home. She’s a wife, a mother (of six) and a person willing to give up her time for others.

Wood is extraordinary for her groundbreaking work in the area of burn injuries and for how she has worked readily and superhumanly after disaster to assist with her skills, knowledge and compassion.

The head of Royal Perth Hospital’s (RPH) burns unit, plastic surgeon and co-founder of biotech company C3 became known to the world in the dreadful aftermath of the 2002 terrorist attacks on Kuta, Bali. But her journey began 10 years earlier.

In 1992 a high school science teacher arrived at the RPH burns unit with severe burns to 90 percent of his body. As head of department, Wood worked on the man for hours, and managed to keep him alive. But she thought there should be a better way. So she started the C3 medical research foundation with medical scientist Marie Stoner.

Together, they developed “spray-on skin”: essentially a treatment that involves harvesting cultivated healthy skin cells and spraying them onto a patient’s burns while the cells are still active. The process creates less scarring, which, way beyond wound appearance, has profound functional benefits and is conducive to stronger post-trauma skin.

“It was and still is, exciting to push the boundaries to try to find better solutions to reduce the impact of burn injuries and scarring,” says Wood.

In October 2002 it was put to its most critical test. Twenty-eight victims of the Bali bombings arrived at the Royal Perth burns unit where Wood co-ordinated a team of 60 doctors and nurses who worked continually for days and saved all 28 patients, some who had over 90 percent burns to their bodies.

In 2005 she was made Australian of the Year among other accolades. But Wood simply worked on, saving one life at a time. She shuns the hero tag. “I am the team leader as a result of my education and training, not a hero. I would say the heroes are those who survive.”

Then in 2007, a plane crash in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, saw Wood rising to disaster’s call again. She was part of the emergency team that treated survivors with burns injuries in Indonesia, then later oversaw their medi-vac to Australia and recovery in the RPH.

She continues her work, has been deemed a National Living Treasure for it, and is consistently cited as Australia’s most trusted citizen.

For Wood, though, it’s not about accolades. It’s about the need she has felt, since early in life, to make a difference.

“A lot of people have supported me along the way and I feel strongly that I need to do my best to justify all the energy through the years,” she says.