Angelique Mseteka is a registered nurse based in Salima, Malawi. When she heard about a clinical trial studying pneumococcal vaccines in 2021, she had both personal and professional reasons to pay attention. She understood the science, and she knew the children that pneumonia was killing. They were members of her community. The more she learned about the trial, the more convinced she became of its importance.
The study was the Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV) efficacy trial at the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Programme — the first Controlled Human Infection Model (CHIM) trial ever conducted in Malawi. In a CHIM study, healthy adult volunteers are deliberately exposed to a pathogen under close medical supervision to generate precise immunological data. For Angelique, that meant having a small amount of Streptococcus pneumoniae — the bacterium behind pneumonia — introduced into her nose in a controlled outpatient setting, allowing researchers to study how it behaves and how vaccines can protect the children who need it most.
Malawi has a very young population and high rates of pneumonia in children under five. A vaccine exists, but researchers needed better data on how it works and how to deploy it most effectively for the infants most at risk. For Angelique, the trial was a direct opportunity to address something she witnessed in her community every day. She could help while incurring little personal risk, and she saw no reason not to. “There was a bigger picture,” she explains. She wanted to help bring about a reality where “future generations” in her community could “live a better life free from diseases.” She feels she made the right decision: “If I have a chance to do it again, I think I will.”
She found the process more “interesting” than daunting. There was, she acknowledges, “a little bit of discomfort” with sample collection, but she was monitored closely throughout and remains healthy. She hopes her ongoing health will reassure others who are considering participating, noting that some members of her community worry that trial participation might result in chronic illness. Even so, she is optimistic that many others would volunteer as healthy participants under the right conditions. “I think everyone wants a better life, a better future. For their families, for their loved ones… and for everyone.” In her view, the desire to protect future generations is not unusual. What is often missing is the confidence that participation is safe.
She is also practical about the limits of any trial. “Nothing is 100%,” she says, and she would expect any trial to be halted if it was not producing results or was causing undue harm to participants. The goal, as she sees it, is not establishing absolute certainty but creating the conditions that allow people to feel safe doing what they can to help move science forward. It is this conviction that now drives her involvement in shaping clinical trial design more broadly.
If I have a chance to do it again, I think I will.
Research Participation: Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine efficacy studied by Controlled Human Infection Model
Passionate About: Community sensitization and participant protection
Outside the Council: Plays netball — center is her favorite position
Her Friends Describe Her as: Friendly, Hard-working, and Inspiring
Participant Advocacy Group Initiative launch event, Malawi, March 2026
Angelique has since joined 1Day Sooner’s Participant Council, an international body of healthy research volunteers brought together to ensure that the people who take part in trials have a meaningful voice in the research that depends on them — shaping study design, informing ethics, and advocating for participant-centered standards worldwide. She is also part of the new Participant Advocacy Group Initiative (PAGI), launched by the Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Programme (MLW) under the Malawi Accelerated Research Vaccines by Experimental and Laboratory Sciences (MARVELS). The group focuses on strengthening participant protection, ethical oversight, transparency, and community engagement for CHIM research in Malawi — issues Angelique has become increasingly passionate about.
Her priorities on the Council reflect her experience as a participant: improving protections for future volunteers, minimizing risks, and ensuring fair compensation. On the last point, she is unambiguous. Participants need to feel that their time and the risks they take are genuinely recognized. “They need to be compensated,” she says simply. For her, fair compensation is not incidental, nor does it undermine the altruism that motivates research participation. It is part of building a research ecosystem that people can trust and return to.
Angelique’s measure of success is similarly grounded: “I will be more proud to know that the next participant won’t be harmed in any way… that as they participate, they will be comfortable, and by the end of the trial, they will be healthy.” It is an ambition that reaches beyond any single trial. Through her work on the Council and with PAGI, Angelique is helping to shape the standards and protections that govern how clinical trials are conducted — in Malawi and around the world — so that the next volunteer, wherever they are, is well looked after.
If you’ve participated in a human challenge study, or are interested in doing so, 1Day Sooner wants to hear from you. You can sign up at https://www.1daysooner.org/volunteer/ or reach out at volunteer@1daysooner.org.