It was a father of a three-year-old. His daughter had been in a car crash and was now a paraplegic.

"I can't offer anything in terms of treatments other than advice on exercise and the best way to keep this little girl fit. But...she should not be told she's never going to walk again," Mr Wallace said.

Mr Wallace, the executive director of SpinalCure Australia was one of the keynote speakers at last week's Regional Development Australia's 2024 Inland Growth Summit at Dubbo.

His organisation is committed to developing a cure for spinal cord injuries.

Mr Wallace said within the little girl's lifetime, within the next 15 years even, the ability to regrow nerves in the spinal cord should be available to every day people.

Mr Wallace became a C4/5 quadriplegic when he was 24-years-old. He was hit by a drunk driver in Papua New Guinea.

"There is little that devastates a life more thoroughly," he said.

And for people living outside of the cities, the devastation is more common.

"The further away you get from traffic and the hustle and bustle of the big city, the more likely you are to have a spinal cord injury. In fact, in remote and rural areas per capita, it's almost twice the number of people injured each year than in the cities."

While there's no definitive reason behind the stats, Mr Wallace said he suspects it's the nature of the work in rural and regional areas. Rather than people sitting in offices, people in rural and regional areas are doing much more outdoor work with horses, motorbikes and quad bikes.

According to SpinalCure's research, 39 per cent of spinal cord injuries come from land transport, and another 39 per cent is from falls. Seven per cent come from football and horse injuries.

About 20,000 people in Australia live with spinal cord injuries.

"Spinal cord injury costs the Australian economy a staggering $3.7 billion a year in loss of productivity and direct healthcare costs. Now for a fraction of that, and in the hands of the right scientists a cure is a very believable goal," Mr Wallace said.

SpinalCure has combined with three other not-for-profit organisations to develop the world's first gold standard neurostimulation trial. It aims to improve standing and walking in paraplegics who still have some movement.

It's one of three trials the organisation has in the works.

However, finding enough participants for the trials has not been easy.

Mr Wallace said it costs about $7000 for someone from a regional city to spend 12 weeks in Sydney to take part in the trial. It's 12 weeks that person, and potentially a carer would need to take off work.

Funding help is available through SpinalCure and for those in NSW the Isolated Patients Travel and Accommodation Assistance Scheme. But that's not the only issue. There's also a relatively small number of people who can take part.

"There are 20,000 people living with spinal cord injury in this country but the majority of those aren't going to be eligible. We only see one spinal cord injury per day and that sounds like a lot but in comparison to so many other ailments like cancer. It's a relatively small number of people," he said.

"It's just the impact of a spinal cord injury is so much greater than most other things we see."

While the outside focus always falls on getting people to walk again, Mr Wallace compares that to the tip of the iceberg. It's under the iceberg where the real issues lie, everything from blood pressure problems to a compromised immune system.

"The things people actually care about, better bowel and bladder control is number one. For people like me, quadriplegics, number one on the wish list is hand control. I can't tell you what it would mean to get a functional grip back," Mr Wallace said.

He jokes it would mean he wouldn't have to drink beer through a straw.

But any small improvements to a paraplegic could be life-changing, he said.

The one thing Mr Wallace wants is for people to have hope.

"Improvements in spinal cord injury are now possible. We are taking the 'un' out of 'unbelievable'. It wasn't that long ago that people didn't believe that was possible. Now it is, it's just a matter of funding," he said.

"Everybody accepts that a cure is inevitable around the world. Through this work that we're doing Australia is playing an important part of that on a global scale."