Duncan Bannatyne, chair of Bannatyne Fitness, the UK's largest independent health club operator, has teamed up with an international charity to build an orphanage in Romania.

Bannatyne has underwritten the cost of building the orphanage, to be called Bannatyne House, and has committed to contribute towards its running costs estimated at around £50,000 a year.

The home is being built by the charity Scottish International Relief in the Transylvania area of Romania and will house 10 abandoned and HIV infected children until they are 18 year old.

Bannatyne said the plight of these children has had a profound affect on him: 'I have visited Romania to find children living in sewers and on waste tips, which was shocking and distressing enough, but then I discovered the living conditions in the hospitals are just as horrific. I hope Bannatyne House offers a small number of Romanian children a chance of a better future.'