Napo Meskhia

Napoleon Meskhia was born on 28 May 1938 in the village of Otobaia in the Gali district of the Abkhaz Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, then part of Soviet Georgia. After finishing secondary school he worked in a coal mine in Tkvarcheli. He went on to study at the medical faculty of the Tbilisi State Medical Institute, graduating in 1964.

From 1964 Meskhia worked as a surgeon in Tkvarcheli and Gali. In 1966 he moved to Moscow to train at the N. Burdenko Institute of Neurosurgery, where he completed clinical residency and postgraduate study. He defended his candidate dissertation there and in 1976 his doctoral thesis, becoming a doctor of medical sciences and later a professor.

He returned to Georgia in 1978. At the end of the 1970s a neurosurgical department was opened in Abkhazia on his initiative, at first on the base of the republican psycho-neurological hospital, and he headed it for many years. In 1987 a dedicated neurosurgical building was built at the Abkhaz Republican Hospital in Sukhumi, and the Republican Neurosurgical Centre of Abkhazia was created with him as director. It was equipped with the first computed tomography scanner in Georgia. According to the National Parliamentary Library of Georgia, he was the first surgeon in Georgia to operate successfully on arterial and arteriovenous aneurysms of the brain, and the centre treated brain and spinal tumours, head injuries and vascular conditions to international standards. He introduced several new methods of surgery and treatment and was the author of a number of inventions and scientific works.

He founded the public medical charity Gulmotskaleba (Mercy) in Abkhazia and was its president. In 1991 he was elected a deputy of the Supreme Council of the Abkhaz Autonomous Republic. After the war in Abkhazia he remained a member of the council, which continued to work in exile in Tbilisi, and served as its deputy chairman. He wrote about the conflict in two books published in 2009, How Abkhazia Was Alienated and Abkhazia: The Bitter Truth.

Meskhia was a native of the Gali district and remained closely tied to the community of people displaced from Abkhazia, presenting his book on the conflict to students in Zugdidi. In later life he lived in Tbilisi. Details of his family life were not widely published.

Napoleon Meskhia died on 21 October 2026 in Tbilisi, at the age of 88. His death was announced by the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia, which expressed deep sorrow and offered condolences to his family, relatives and friends, and was reported by the news agency Timer on 22 October. Memorial services were held in Tbilisi on 22, 23 and 24 October, and the funeral was set for 25 October 2026 from the Church of St Nino, with burial in the Makhata Pantheon of Writers and Public Figures. The cause of death was not made public.

Meskhia is remembered as the founder of neurosurgery in Abkhazia and as a pioneer of aneurysm surgery in Georgia. The Order of Honour he received in 1999 recognised both his medical work and his part in the evacuation and care of displaced people from Abkhazia, and in 2023 the Georgian National Academy of Sciences honoured his scientific achievements in medicine. His burial in the Makhata pantheon placed him among the public figures Georgia chooses to commemorate.