To visitors, Viscri's remoteness is its strength. The village in the Transylvanian mountains is popular with tourists seeking a part of Europe untouched by progress.

The Prince of Wales was so enchanted by Viscri whe he visited that he bought a farmhouse there and turned it into a bed and breakfast.

But Viscri's remoteness has its drawbacks. Like many rural villages in western Romania, Viscri has no doctor, no nurse, no medical service whatever. Villagers are forced to travel for many miles across mountainous terrain to get to a GP, and even further to a hospital, but a British film-maker is hoping to change this.

Four years ago Luke Douglas-Home fell of his horse near Viscri, seriously injuring his head on a rock.

He was injected with a horse drug from a nearby farm to stop his brain from swelling and then ferried on the back of truck to meet an ambulance that would take him to a hospital 50 minutes away in Brasov.

When his condition stabilised, he was taken to Bucharest to Romania's main neurosurgical hospital.

That too was a shock. Weeks later he was flown back to London by air ambulance for further treatment, which still continues today.

During his recovery, Douglas-Home, son of the late Times Editor Charles Douglas-Home, decided to set up a charity, The Medical Trust , to raise money for a host of projects in Romania in the hope others will not have to endure his ordeal.

Central to the project is restoring and renovating a disused building in Viscri to be used as a medical centre, fitted out with basic medical equipment. A part-time doctor will also be recruited to hold regular clinics there.

“Romania is a member of the EU but if people knew the full horror of the health service is there they would be really shocked. People are literally elbowing each other out of the way, jostling and pleading for treatment for their relatives. I cannot thing what would have happened to me if I had not been a foreigner and fully insured. I received the best treatment. I cannot imagine what happens to ordinary Romanians,” he told The Times.

He is hoping to raise £19,000 to open the clinic in Viscri and has made a documentary retracing his steps of his treatment followiing his life-threatening accident to draw attention to the crisis. “A successful clinic in Viscri could become a model for other rural towns and villages to follow. It is not a lot of money to transform the lives of many people,” he said.