MEXICO CITY — Homophobia and disappointments in the search for a vaccine were expected to dominate the 17th International AIDS Conference as an estimated 25,000 scientists, politicians, physicians and activists gathered in Mexico City. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told the conference on its opening day Sunday that discrimination against gays must end and called for countries to expand AIDS-prevention programmes for the high-risk group. It is the first such AIDS conference in Latin America since the epidemic began in the 1980s. The gathering, expected to be the largest to date for the biennial conference, is to end Friday. Mexican President Felipe Calderon, former Botswana president Festus Mogae and St Kitts and Nevis President Denzil Douglas each called for the end of discrimination against gay men. Mogae was one of the first African leaders to publicly undergo an HIV test to set an example for his countrymen and -women. Thousands of people demonstrated in the streets of the Mexican capital against homophobia. Gay men represent one-fourth of the new infections in Latin America. Jorge Saavedra Lopez, the director general of Mexico’s National Centre for Prevention and Control of HIV/AIDS and the country’s first openly […]