A baby girl whom doctors believe was made seriously sick by contaminated water in Bermuda is unlikely to suffer any long-term ill effects, according to her parents.

The thankful couple, who asked not to be named, told The Royal Gazette that they feared their child’s eyesight could be affected by the medication she had to take after contracting a lymph node infection in 2012, but recent tests showed no sign of any damage.

“[My daughter] did just have her most recent check-up and her eyesight seems to be 30/20,” the girl’s father said. “She is doing better and all signs point to a full recovery. She is a year off the medications and there is a happy ending.”

As first reported by this newspaper in April, two doctors in the United States diagnosed atypical mycobacterial cervical lymphadenitis in the youngster, which was likely to have been caused by contaminated water.

The girl’s guest worker parents rented a house in Smith’s for $4,400 a month and claim they were told by their landlady after the diagnosis that she could not remember having the tank cleaned at the house and that it could have been 30 years since it was last done.

The law requires household tanks to be cleaned every six years, but the Department of Health admitted this year that no one has ever been prosecuted for not cleaning a tank under the Public Health (Water Storage) Regulations 1951.

The child’s father said this week that he hoped the case highlighted the potential health dangers present in tank water and alerted tenants to the legal obligation for landlords to keep tanks clean.

“It needs to be part of every lease going forward that if you are renting out a house, you have a responsibility to make sure that the water is clean,” he said.

His daughter never drank tap water at the three-bedroom property they rented but he believes she was exposed to the disease-causing bacterium kansasii in her bath water and from having her teeth brushed.

The tot had to have an MRI scan and a three-hour operation under general anaesthetic to have an infected lymph node the “size of a golf ball” removed from her neck a month before her 1st birthday.

The family have since returned to the US to live and the father said the experience had left emotional scars. “I had to give up my whole business,” he said. “We have been ostracised from the Island, yet it’s not an expat issue; it’s a much bigger issue.

“We don’t want to paint our experience in Bermuda as a negative, but we also don’t want it to happen to anyone else.”

The results of a government study into Bermuda’s rainwater catchment and conservation system, and the quality of the Island’s drinking and bathing water, are due to be published this year.

Meanwhile, residents were warned after the recent twin storms to check their tanks for excessive vegetation, to aerate and chlorinate the water and to get their tank cleaned if it had not been done in the past six years.

The couple’s former landlady has denied any liability in the case.